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The War for Gloria
'A legendary writer entirely on his own account' Observer'Stunningly good' GuardianGloria Goltz's intellectual ambitions are derailed when she meets Leonard at college. Self-taught, blue-collar, possessor of an aggressive intelligence, Leonard claims to hold the key to unlocking her potential. After making her pregnant, he disappears. Her son Corey grows up without a father, looking for a male role model �- and restless, dreaming of a great adventure.Instead, when Corey is fifteen, Gloria is diagnosed with motor neuron disease, and his estranged father - this man of domineering charisma and dubious moral character - returns. Determined to be his mother's hero at any cost, Corey begins shouldering responsibility for her expensive medical care, pushing himself to his physical and emotional limits as her disease progresses. And as Leonard's influence over son and mother grows, Corey must dismantle the myth of his father's genius and confront the evil that lurks beneath it.Atticus Lish won a Pen/Faulkner award for his debut Preparation for the Next Life, a novel 'described as the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade' in The New York Times. His second novel confirms Lish as a beguiling storyteller and a prose stylist of extraordinary emotional reach and beauty.
448 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 2021
121 people are currently reading
5158 people want to read
About the author
Atticus Lish
9 books144 followersAtticus Lish (born 1972) is an American novelist. His debut, Preparation for the Next Life, caught its independent publisher “off guard” by becoming a surprise success, winning a number of awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Lish lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with his wife. He is the son of influential literary editor Gordon Lish.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 201 reviews
September 3, 2021
Homeless, a cruel barbaric father and a mother who loves with all her heart and diagnosed with ALS, a cruel enemy in itself. This is the heartwrenching situation 15 year old, Corey, finds himself in. This story brought unbelievable, dark depressing moments while watching a good person as Corey trying to find the good of the world. I could not put this coming of age story down as I tried to process and find the hope this child needed.
The setting is a small town in Massachusett nestled in the midst of Boston & Cambridge. With a label attached as a slacker in school, what they could not see is the work he did beyond the school taking on jobs to care for his mother. He searched for existence with good mentors, but they would leave him farther down from the influence he needed. For example, a construction site job lured him to alcohol and drug dealing. Picking himself up from that he found a fight club and trainer, Eddie, but when he had to take a short leave to care for his mom, the trainer ditched him. When he connected with Adrian, a brilliant MIT student, whose mother has brain cancer, he decided to reconnect with his own education. This is where it left me devastated when Adrian bonds with Corey's abusive & cruel dad and things begin to go down hill with unbelievable acts he escapes from, but not before the police are hunting him down.
My thoughts: Where were the social workers and school officials when all these red flags were hanging from every angle of Corey's life? Not normally a book I would have chosen, but our family is very familiar with the destructive and degenerative disease ALS. https://www.als.org/understanding-als...
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The setting is a small town in Massachusett nestled in the midst of Boston & Cambridge. With a label attached as a slacker in school, what they could not see is the work he did beyond the school taking on jobs to care for his mother. He searched for existence with good mentors, but they would leave him farther down from the influence he needed. For example, a construction site job lured him to alcohol and drug dealing. Picking himself up from that he found a fight club and trainer, Eddie, but when he had to take a short leave to care for his mom, the trainer ditched him. When he connected with Adrian, a brilliant MIT student, whose mother has brain cancer, he decided to reconnect with his own education. This is where it left me devastated when Adrian bonds with Corey's abusive & cruel dad and things begin to go down hill with unbelievable acts he escapes from, but not before the police are hunting him down.
My thoughts: Where were the social workers and school officials when all these red flags were hanging from every angle of Corey's life? Not normally a book I would have chosen, but our family is very familiar with the destructive and degenerative disease ALS. https://www.als.org/understanding-als...
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
setting-aside
November 7, 2021I’m not connecting right now with the detailed writing style. It sounds like such a good story, though. I may come back to it.
August 11, 2022
As he did in his award-winning Preparation for the Next Life, Atticus Lish delivers a gritty, gut-wrenching story of people living in the margins. He writes with authenticity and compassion about a young man who is caring for his mom (who’s dying from ALS) while he’s also working in construction, training for MMA cage fights, and contending with a psychopathic father, among other challenges. Not an easy read, but one that will stay with me for a long, long time.
September 17, 2021
This book is astonishingly bad - not astonishing because it’s really THAT bad but because so many reviewers say how great it is (Dwight Garner, I’m looking at you - you betray my trust). There isn’t a single realistic character, nor a single thread of story to hang on to (at page 112) and when characters do talk, they say things that real people don’t say. Corey is whiny and thin, Leonard is a cartoon character and Adrian… Ugh
What a massive disappointment - I’m nervous to try “Preparation for the Next Life” now
What a massive disappointment - I’m nervous to try “Preparation for the Next Life” now
January 28, 2022
I was so disappointed with this book. On the surface, it sounded like a heart-wrenching but potentially good story. In reality, it was excruciatingly slow with characters that were fairly one-dimensional and incapable of evolution or redemption. I get it, life doesn't always give us happy endings, but sometimes literature should give us an out, but this book does not. There is, of course, a cycle of abuse and horror that drives the story along, but the ending is pure frustration in its ambiguity and unwillingness to take a stand or make a point. Why this book is so highly praised is truly beyond me.
December 31, 2021
I've read THE WAR FOR GLORIA twice. The first time I was so knocked out by it that I couldn't find the words to explain why I was so knocked out by it. That happens sometimes; what I do is wait a few months, then read it again so I my thoughts can cohere into coherent sentences. That's what usually happens.
But the second time I read THE WAR FOR GLORIA, I was even more knocked out by it, and even less able to articulate why, other than to say that nothing played out as I thought or hoped or expected it would, and everything that did was play was perfectly plausible, and I was never less than satisfied with any of it, likely because its lack of predictability.
Corey Goltz, the center of this story, is heroic, and less than heroic, and pure, and less than pure, and sympathetic most of the time, and sometimes not sympathetic. He's smart, stupid and searching in equal measure, and he's someone I'd follow more than some Spenser-like pseudo-aspirational restorer of moral order. Likewise THE WAR FOR GLORIA is not crime fiction, but it's fiction, and there's a fair amount of crime in it, and it feels a bit like where crime fiction is headed, in its newfound quest for representation of forgotten peoples and its striving for authenticity above nearly all else.
That's about all I am able to say about THE WAR FOR GLORIA right now.
So sometimes, I've decided, the experience of reading a book — the awe, the joy, the mystery — is a review unto itself. A copout for a reviewer, perhaps, but I guess I think that sometimes we have just have to make room for awe and less for analysis in order to remind ourselves that we are human and feel human things and that it has to be OK sometimes for things to not always snap perfectly together like a puzzle.
Awe isn't distraction, it's a state of joy that demands a thoughtful unpacking in its own very good time. Perhaps after a third reading of THE WAR FOR GLORIA, and a fourth, and ....
But the second time I read THE WAR FOR GLORIA, I was even more knocked out by it, and even less able to articulate why, other than to say that nothing played out as I thought or hoped or expected it would, and everything that did was play was perfectly plausible, and I was never less than satisfied with any of it, likely because its lack of predictability.
Corey Goltz, the center of this story, is heroic, and less than heroic, and pure, and less than pure, and sympathetic most of the time, and sometimes not sympathetic. He's smart, stupid and searching in equal measure, and he's someone I'd follow more than some Spenser-like pseudo-aspirational restorer of moral order. Likewise THE WAR FOR GLORIA is not crime fiction, but it's fiction, and there's a fair amount of crime in it, and it feels a bit like where crime fiction is headed, in its newfound quest for representation of forgotten peoples and its striving for authenticity above nearly all else.
That's about all I am able to say about THE WAR FOR GLORIA right now.
So sometimes, I've decided, the experience of reading a book — the awe, the joy, the mystery — is a review unto itself. A copout for a reviewer, perhaps, but I guess I think that sometimes we have just have to make room for awe and less for analysis in order to remind ourselves that we are human and feel human things and that it has to be OK sometimes for things to not always snap perfectly together like a puzzle.
Awe isn't distraction, it's a state of joy that demands a thoughtful unpacking in its own very good time. Perhaps after a third reading of THE WAR FOR GLORIA, and a fourth, and ....
July 22, 2021
What a writer. From the first paragraph you will be by Corey's side as he navigates his minefield of a life. He's fifteen and lives with his mother Gloria in Quincy, Mass. They've been homeless or sleeping on friends' sofas for years, and now they have their own apartment, Gloria has a regular job, and Corey's doing well in school. His strange father, Leonard, makes an occasional appearance.
Corey looks for mentors among the hardworking construction workers in the neighborhood. He's excited to make a little money heping on sites. He also makes a strange friend, a kid named Adrian who is headed to MIT and thinks almost entirely about math, physics, and physical strength. When Gloria is diagnosed with ALS, he discovers that Adrian's mom has brain cancer. The two boys' reaction to their mothers' situations could not be more different.
Every character is so fully created that they could have a novel of their own. Corey's father Leonard, the MIT security guard who carries around giant physics textbooks and believes himself to be the only rational thinker on the planet. He is one of the most disconcerting characters I've encountered in a long time. And there's Gloria, with her devastating diagnosis and her fight to keep supporting Corey as long as she can.
Atticus Lish builds suspense, keeping you glued to the page. What will happen to Corey after Gloria dies? How will he get his frightening father out of his life? What way will Corey choose? In a way this novel reminds me of "Shuggie Bain" because of the way you are connected to the characters no matter what they are going through. Fantastic book.
Corey looks for mentors among the hardworking construction workers in the neighborhood. He's excited to make a little money heping on sites. He also makes a strange friend, a kid named Adrian who is headed to MIT and thinks almost entirely about math, physics, and physical strength. When Gloria is diagnosed with ALS, he discovers that Adrian's mom has brain cancer. The two boys' reaction to their mothers' situations could not be more different.
Every character is so fully created that they could have a novel of their own. Corey's father Leonard, the MIT security guard who carries around giant physics textbooks and believes himself to be the only rational thinker on the planet. He is one of the most disconcerting characters I've encountered in a long time. And there's Gloria, with her devastating diagnosis and her fight to keep supporting Corey as long as she can.
Atticus Lish builds suspense, keeping you glued to the page. What will happen to Corey after Gloria dies? How will he get his frightening father out of his life? What way will Corey choose? In a way this novel reminds me of "Shuggie Bain" because of the way you are connected to the characters no matter what they are going through. Fantastic book.
March 9, 2023
very woooordy writing style. hard to start. amazing story :,)
August 19, 2021
When it deals with the struggles of its teen-aged protagonist, Corey Goltz, to find both a mentor and a place in the world, The War for Gloria is a harsh, often wrenching work. Corey lives with his mother, Gloria, whose vaguely "counterculture" dreams have come to nothing, and who has developed the increasingly handicapping condition ALS. His father, Leonard, a security guard at MIT who has had failed dreams of his own, wanders in and out of their lives, selfishly--sometimes brutally indifferent to Gloria's needs and increasingly hostile to Corey. Corey feels the need for a mentor, even a father figure who can guide him toward a competent manhood in which he can achieve a level of strength and independence, and be able to care for his mother. It soon becomes apparent that these attempts will lead to disappointment, both with others and with himself. At school, he is viewed as a shirker, more likely to face disciplinary action than sympathetic counseling. He is pleased to be advised by Tom, a construction worker whose advice and straightforward manner help Corey to get his first jobs. However, another construction worker lures Corey into dealing with the wrong people, involving him in excessive drinking and a brief association with abortive drug-dealing. Corey turns to a tough "fight club" style wrestling scene in which he is mentored by the manager/trainer Eddie who seems very supportive and encourages Corey to continue. However, when Corey has to leave that scene for some time, the manager is finished with him. The scenes of the wrestling matches are among the most difficult to read in the book, as are those detailing Gloria's increasing weakness and loss of motor ability.
Corey also turns to a contemporary, Adrian, whose brilliance in mathematics and physics so impress Corey at first that Corey views that young man as a model of what he himself might aspire to, a brilliant student indifferent to campus life in a body chiseled by extraordinary strength-building sessions. That relationship sours as well; Adrian, unlike Corey, hates his own mother and chooses a life in which he isolates himself from others, and has fantasies of power and domination.
It is no wonder that Adrian develops a connection with surreptitious connection with Leonard, Corey's father. That connection will lead to a deadly conclusion.
Ultimately, Corey finds no good place for himself in his Massachusetts community and chooses to head out on his own in the armed forces, yet another attempt to discover a place in the world that relies on the determination and "masculine" strength that he values.
While the tough, harrowing scenes are appropriate to the content of this narrative, the work as a whole suffered from overwriting, from descriptions too concerned with portraying physical strength ( How often did we have to read about a guy's bulging muscles and huge neck?), and unnecessary detail ( Did we have to be given minute by minute descriptions of a drive to a medical center, or just every trip in to or out of Boston and the surrounding areas?). The text works toward climactic moments which fail to happen. The narrative thread involving Corey's father, his former friend Adrian, and the daughter of the construction worker,Tom, was poorly motivated and unconvincing. Much of the time, I wanted to take a pencil to the text and cross out unnecessary sentences. In other words, I felt this novel could have benefited from sympathetic editing.
The novel presents a strong picture of a decent person trying to negotiate an often indifferent society, hoping to come to terms with the world as best he can. The author seemed to be on his side, but the writer's own views seem to have left his central character with few good choices.
I hope Corey made the right one.
Corey also turns to a contemporary, Adrian, whose brilliance in mathematics and physics so impress Corey at first that Corey views that young man as a model of what he himself might aspire to, a brilliant student indifferent to campus life in a body chiseled by extraordinary strength-building sessions. That relationship sours as well; Adrian, unlike Corey, hates his own mother and chooses a life in which he isolates himself from others, and has fantasies of power and domination.
It is no wonder that Adrian develops a connection with surreptitious connection with Leonard, Corey's father. That connection will lead to a deadly conclusion.
Ultimately, Corey finds no good place for himself in his Massachusetts community and chooses to head out on his own in the armed forces, yet another attempt to discover a place in the world that relies on the determination and "masculine" strength that he values.
While the tough, harrowing scenes are appropriate to the content of this narrative, the work as a whole suffered from overwriting, from descriptions too concerned with portraying physical strength ( How often did we have to read about a guy's bulging muscles and huge neck?), and unnecessary detail ( Did we have to be given minute by minute descriptions of a drive to a medical center, or just every trip in to or out of Boston and the surrounding areas?). The text works toward climactic moments which fail to happen. The narrative thread involving Corey's father, his former friend Adrian, and the daughter of the construction worker,Tom, was poorly motivated and unconvincing. Much of the time, I wanted to take a pencil to the text and cross out unnecessary sentences. In other words, I felt this novel could have benefited from sympathetic editing.
The novel presents a strong picture of a decent person trying to negotiate an often indifferent society, hoping to come to terms with the world as best he can. The author seemed to be on his side, but the writer's own views seem to have left his central character with few good choices.
I hope Corey made the right one.
December 17, 2021
To begin, a caution: I may find it difficult to express what I feel in the following without revealing spoiler material, so if you're sensitive....
The War for Gloria is a forceful read, full of power and potency. It's not a novel of ideas yet is convincing in the importance of what it says, and you hurry on, eagerly reading to find out what that is. The war for Gloria involves Corey, her son, and Leonard, her husband, as well as Adrian, Molly, Tom, and Joan, and several others. Not all of them survive. Wars have casualties.
Having read and admired Lish's 1st novel Preparations for the Next Life a few years ago, I expected the grit and edginess of his themes. I'd been gripped by the earlier novel's story of people struggling in America to get by and propelled by need toward violence. The War for Gloria is a gentler novel. Its characters are a little better off, but it's still a breathtakingly hard look at people who live with some degree of desperation.
I was surprised near the end to have decided it's a kind of coming of age novel. On the face of it the war of the title is the struggle between Corey and his father for Gloria's affection. In some ways it's a novel lionizing the blue collar work ethic, and it celebrates those areas of Boston, from Cambridge to Winthrop and Malden to Quincy, where that ethic has importance. Hard manual labor is an important theme Lish highlights throughout. His descriptions of construction work or making marble countertops or the rigging of boats almost become solemnly ceremonial. The prose is direct and true and fits the plain lives of hard-working people. What you see is what you read. At the same time what you may see may be what you as reader bring to this kind of realist fiction.
I thought I found ways of religious understanding as I read deeper. Lish doesn't signal or feint in any direction to draw you in. He simply presents a rather elemental struggle between good and evil. The war for Gloria pits Corey's pride, filial obligation, and moral purity against Leonard's scandal, obscenity, and dysfunction. Complicating it is the fact that Gloria has been diagnosed with and is rapidly degenerating from ALS, which leaves her at the mercy of Leonard's malevolence while desperately dependent on Corey's pure devotion. She can only offer love. Part of the war is that Leonard wants to take her love while Corey wants to emulate it. The manual skills Corey admires and acquires while managing to keep the family afloat financially, along with the cage-fighting and strenuous physical training he endures, is homage to the saintliness of the Gloria he's dedicated to protecting. The last chapter is satisfyingly titled " O Gloria," and we're reminded that the Latin word is used in certain doxologies in praise of God. But Lish leads us even deeper. All these themes are mere tributaries feeding a rapidly effulgent river flowing toward the end of the novel. The old brick districts and warehouses and labyrinthine streets of Boston may be as much questing ground as modern city. Lish provides no map but leads us to the idea that the blue collar lifestyle and the punishing physical training necessary for Corey's pursuit of a cage-fighting career are both devotion and preparation for the next life.
I think this a terrific novel. Another caution: once you begin it you won't be able to put it down.
The War for Gloria is a forceful read, full of power and potency. It's not a novel of ideas yet is convincing in the importance of what it says, and you hurry on, eagerly reading to find out what that is. The war for Gloria involves Corey, her son, and Leonard, her husband, as well as Adrian, Molly, Tom, and Joan, and several others. Not all of them survive. Wars have casualties.
Having read and admired Lish's 1st novel Preparations for the Next Life a few years ago, I expected the grit and edginess of his themes. I'd been gripped by the earlier novel's story of people struggling in America to get by and propelled by need toward violence. The War for Gloria is a gentler novel. Its characters are a little better off, but it's still a breathtakingly hard look at people who live with some degree of desperation.
I was surprised near the end to have decided it's a kind of coming of age novel. On the face of it the war of the title is the struggle between Corey and his father for Gloria's affection. In some ways it's a novel lionizing the blue collar work ethic, and it celebrates those areas of Boston, from Cambridge to Winthrop and Malden to Quincy, where that ethic has importance. Hard manual labor is an important theme Lish highlights throughout. His descriptions of construction work or making marble countertops or the rigging of boats almost become solemnly ceremonial. The prose is direct and true and fits the plain lives of hard-working people. What you see is what you read. At the same time what you may see may be what you as reader bring to this kind of realist fiction.
I thought I found ways of religious understanding as I read deeper. Lish doesn't signal or feint in any direction to draw you in. He simply presents a rather elemental struggle between good and evil. The war for Gloria pits Corey's pride, filial obligation, and moral purity against Leonard's scandal, obscenity, and dysfunction. Complicating it is the fact that Gloria has been diagnosed with and is rapidly degenerating from ALS, which leaves her at the mercy of Leonard's malevolence while desperately dependent on Corey's pure devotion. She can only offer love. Part of the war is that Leonard wants to take her love while Corey wants to emulate it. The manual skills Corey admires and acquires while managing to keep the family afloat financially, along with the cage-fighting and strenuous physical training he endures, is homage to the saintliness of the Gloria he's dedicated to protecting. The last chapter is satisfyingly titled " O Gloria," and we're reminded that the Latin word is used in certain doxologies in praise of God. But Lish leads us even deeper. All these themes are mere tributaries feeding a rapidly effulgent river flowing toward the end of the novel. The old brick districts and warehouses and labyrinthine streets of Boston may be as much questing ground as modern city. Lish provides no map but leads us to the idea that the blue collar lifestyle and the punishing physical training necessary for Corey's pursuit of a cage-fighting career are both devotion and preparation for the next life.
I think this a terrific novel. Another caution: once you begin it you won't be able to put it down.
August 22, 2022
While I loved his 'Preparation for the Next Life', this one, which has the same (over?) detailed style was more of an ordeal to read maybe because it was about (among other things) two macho adolescents on the nerd/incel border with problematic relationships with their mothers (both suffering with illness) and on-and-off fathers. They deal with this by becoming hardened, beyond hurting: fighters (cage fighting)/ drug dealers/construction workers/philosophers (cod-Nietzsche)/physics students. One gets nastier by the minute, the other more thoughtful and aware of others (particularly Gloria, his mother whose debilitating motor neurone disease forces him into a carer's role). Lish gives us an almost day by day account of their lives (sometimes minute by minute) accompanied by globs of undigested research and lists of statistics. I don't know, I know it's me, but I wished his father (Gordon Lish who famously edited Carver) would step in with his red pen now and again. However I can see that others will love this in the same way I was blown away by his first novel: Lish tackles controversial subjects without fear, with skill and painstaking attention and an open heart.
November 19, 2021
I suppose I need a shelf called "Had to Skim This One." I picked this book up because I read it was "raw" and "searing." Well, perhaps it was too raw for me. THE WAR FOR GLORIA, by Atticus Lish, is a tough story that pits a 15-year-old boy against his estranged father when the boy's mother is diagnosed with ALS.
Lish's writing is blunt and not sentimental. It lacked a sense of rhythm that might have pulled me through the entire book. Instead, I found it choppy and ended up skipping several chapters.
I can't say I'd recommend this to anyone.
TWO STARS
Lish's writing is blunt and not sentimental. It lacked a sense of rhythm that might have pulled me through the entire book. Instead, I found it choppy and ended up skipping several chapters.
I can't say I'd recommend this to anyone.
TWO STARS
July 15, 2021
4.5 stars. A remarkable book. Dark and depressing but also full of character and empathy. It will make you think. Look for my starred review in Booklist.
November 17, 2021
I absolutely love this writer. It is a brutal read, as many are calling it but so unlike anything I’ve read. Preparation for the Next Life is one of my all time favorite books.
November 27, 2022
Never in my reading life have I loved and cared for and rooted for a character more than Corey Goltz, the teenage protagonist of this exceptional novel about models and manifests of masculinity.
Lish's strategic decisions here -- an omniscient narrator who stays on Corey mostly but can hop if needed, sometimes to manipulate the timing of certain reveals; and an allegiance to show-don't-tell -- work exceptionally well to heighten the dramatic and emotional charge of the story. And then there is that clunkiness (& surprise) in the dialogue, carrying characters' confusion & pretense superbly in a show-don't-tell schema. The novel is moving in many, many moments, but most so for me in its most incoherent para, Corey's first angry outburst against his father.
The novel deals with age-old questions: Are we doomed in the struggle against our circumstances? Can we ever overcome them? And in certain ways: Can we overcome ourselves?
Here are Corey's circumstances: He is 15 when his mother, Gloria, is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. It will make her immobile and kill her in 3 to 5 years. His biological father, intermittently present (physically, never emotionally) is possibly violent, and definitely a bit of an impostor. Corey and his mother are poor, and any help from the father comes with leverage.
Working jobs, quitting school, being the primary caregiver for a dependant mother, dealing with a strange father, dealing with his own desire & urges, honing a developing physicality, looking for male models -- Corey has to do all of this alone.
Crime lurks all around these circumstances. A nudge away. And the novel does become a crime novel of sorts in its last third, a turn that it explores with full force, not shying away from drama and (slight) melodrama. I was stunned by Lish's daring. You don't risk losing the reader around page 300 of a 400-pager. But Lish manages to reintegrate that dramatic flourish into Corey's coming-of-age without losing credibility at any juncture.
I don't know much about the politics around The Great American Novel. But this one here is a great American novel.
Lish's strategic decisions here -- an omniscient narrator who stays on Corey mostly but can hop if needed, sometimes to manipulate the timing of certain reveals; and an allegiance to show-don't-tell -- work exceptionally well to heighten the dramatic and emotional charge of the story. And then there is that clunkiness (& surprise) in the dialogue, carrying characters' confusion & pretense superbly in a show-don't-tell schema. The novel is moving in many, many moments, but most so for me in its most incoherent para, Corey's first angry outburst against his father.
The novel deals with age-old questions: Are we doomed in the struggle against our circumstances? Can we ever overcome them? And in certain ways: Can we overcome ourselves?
Here are Corey's circumstances: He is 15 when his mother, Gloria, is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. It will make her immobile and kill her in 3 to 5 years. His biological father, intermittently present (physically, never emotionally) is possibly violent, and definitely a bit of an impostor. Corey and his mother are poor, and any help from the father comes with leverage.
Working jobs, quitting school, being the primary caregiver for a dependant mother, dealing with a strange father, dealing with his own desire & urges, honing a developing physicality, looking for male models -- Corey has to do all of this alone.
Crime lurks all around these circumstances. A nudge away. And the novel does become a crime novel of sorts in its last third, a turn that it explores with full force, not shying away from drama and (slight) melodrama. I was stunned by Lish's daring. You don't risk losing the reader around page 300 of a 400-pager. But Lish manages to reintegrate that dramatic flourish into Corey's coming-of-age without losing credibility at any juncture.
I don't know much about the politics around The Great American Novel. But this one here is a great American novel.
October 18, 2021
A coming of age book involving a son with a largely absent father and a mother diagnosed with ALS.
This book sounded so interesting to me, but I was truly disappointed in it.
Gloria, the mother, is an aging hippie, who works as a case worker and struggles for money. She is a good mother and she and Corey have an (unbelievably?) good relationship, free from strife even during his teen-age years. Corey's father is Leonard who was only briefly involved with Gloria. He claims to be working on a physics dissertation while employed as a night watchman at MIT (like "Good Will Hunting"). He is narcissistic and minimally involved with Leonard until Gloria's illness leaves her more dependent. He is completely unreliable - when Gloria can no longer drive, he takes her to work but then disappears with her car for days forcing her to take public transportation home.
Corey changes multiple times during the book - from a good student to a delinquent to a mixed martial arts fighter to a laborer but there didn't seem to be a trajectory of growth to me. Leonard remained an enigma, much less why Gloria would be involved with him at all. I did like Gloria's character and the depiction of her struggles with ALS.
My biggest problem with the book was that it seemed completely overwritten. The descriptions of scenery, people, roads, etc were unnecessary and distracted from the narrative. A random sample
"The prosecutor was a trim, short, white-haired man in his seventies wearing a charcoal suit. He was talking to a police detective in a belted leather jacket when Corey entered. ..Gold-framed oil paintings of Washington and Lafayette hung on the walls, these tall figures seeming powdered white and spot-lit against their dark backgrounds. Under the feet of Corey's chair, there was a woven rug adorned with fleur-de-lis." Honestly, at some point, I just wanted them to get on with the story.
Explicit violence during mixed martial arts fights was off-putting to me but might not impact others the same way.
This book sounded so interesting to me, but I was truly disappointed in it.
Gloria, the mother, is an aging hippie, who works as a case worker and struggles for money. She is a good mother and she and Corey have an (unbelievably?) good relationship, free from strife even during his teen-age years. Corey's father is Leonard who was only briefly involved with Gloria. He claims to be working on a physics dissertation while employed as a night watchman at MIT (like "Good Will Hunting"). He is narcissistic and minimally involved with Leonard until Gloria's illness leaves her more dependent. He is completely unreliable - when Gloria can no longer drive, he takes her to work but then disappears with her car for days forcing her to take public transportation home.
Corey changes multiple times during the book - from a good student to a delinquent to a mixed martial arts fighter to a laborer but there didn't seem to be a trajectory of growth to me. Leonard remained an enigma, much less why Gloria would be involved with him at all. I did like Gloria's character and the depiction of her struggles with ALS.
My biggest problem with the book was that it seemed completely overwritten. The descriptions of scenery, people, roads, etc were unnecessary and distracted from the narrative. A random sample
"The prosecutor was a trim, short, white-haired man in his seventies wearing a charcoal suit. He was talking to a police detective in a belted leather jacket when Corey entered. ..Gold-framed oil paintings of Washington and Lafayette hung on the walls, these tall figures seeming powdered white and spot-lit against their dark backgrounds. Under the feet of Corey's chair, there was a woven rug adorned with fleur-de-lis." Honestly, at some point, I just wanted them to get on with the story.
Explicit violence during mixed martial arts fights was off-putting to me but might not impact others the same way.
May 8, 2022
People loved this book. I don’t understand. What kept me going was the setting—south Boston, working class guys just trying to figure life out. That’s done well at first. The mother-son relationship is also interesting and lovingly wrought. But the book feels like an early draft, not a sorted-out story. It’s meandering in an uncontrolled, seemingly unintentional way, in a way that makes it feel like Lish just thought up scenes and plopped them down in whatever order. And there’s so much set up early on that goes nowhere, just fizzles, or is sort of alluded to but never actually resolved. I just am so confused about how this was published in this form. Is it because he’s the son of Gordon Lish? Could he not have employed some of his father’s famous editing skills and trimmed a couple hundred pages? Also there’s a bunch of misogyny and violence against women that I realize is supposed to be a theme—there’s an incel character who has some pretty awful scenes and dialogue—but that just feels gratuitous and creepily self-indulgent. I don’t know. This got rave reviews. I don’t understand. It’s just kind of ick all around.
August 26, 2021
I felt like I personally encountered the characters in The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish. I perceived their emotions as if we had been interacting directly. That type of complex character intimacy is difficult for any author, but this one pulled it off flawlessly. The story is an uncomfortable one. There are psychological elements that replayed in my mind and kept me up at night. Incidents that occur in the book are incredibly realistic.
I wonder how many readers will identify a few of the underlying themes besides the obvious more transparent ones: holes in the safety net, social isolation, and reaction formation. There are many lessons in between the lines of text. For example, survival is often contingent on spoken (or unspoken) words, and the words we chose possess a great deal of power.
This book has adult content (psychological and physical) and violence. It will trigger emotional discomfort in people as I believe it was meant to do. Be prepared to handle that before you read it.
I wonder how many readers will identify a few of the underlying themes besides the obvious more transparent ones: holes in the safety net, social isolation, and reaction formation. There are many lessons in between the lines of text. For example, survival is often contingent on spoken (or unspoken) words, and the words we chose possess a great deal of power.
This book has adult content (psychological and physical) and violence. It will trigger emotional discomfort in people as I believe it was meant to do. Be prepared to handle that before you read it.
February 19, 2022
2.5*
Adesanya v. Romero the book, but not because nothing happens (although, for 75% of the book nothing does, in fact, happen), but because it just doesn’t get you excited about what you’re reading, and it doesn’t get you excited about the possibilities for a thing like this to be able to stir you and wake you and drive you insane. This is Lish’s win-by-points book. He’s not a bad writer* (and I’m not so discouraged that I won’t read Preparations), but when literature has the power to knock you out or chokehold you (i.e., take your breath away)—and you’ve been there, you, a reader of fiction have been there, on the canvas, out cold, unconscious, overwhelmed by blunt force or under-oxygenated—when you’ve been there, something like this, which has proper technique, so to speak—which jabs and crosses and parries and counters—something like this just ends up feeling so disappointing. And this isn’t to say that Lish hasn’t dared greatly enough or that he hasn’t scrawled using enough of his own blood: the contents here are certainly personal and thus fragile – but—and I could be wrong here—like Adesanya, Lish here seems to be so focussed on retaining his belt (i.e., his post-Preparations reputation) that his effort just ends up feeling contrived and boring.
*I mean, he clearly isn’t,** but I think Gloria in its published state leaves a lot to be desired, and one can’t help wonder what an uncompromising editor would have demanded of it, and Lish. The irony.
**Although, the dialogue in this is actually quite bad, quite often, in my opinion.
Adesanya v. Romero the book, but not because nothing happens (although, for 75% of the book nothing does, in fact, happen), but because it just doesn’t get you excited about what you’re reading, and it doesn’t get you excited about the possibilities for a thing like this to be able to stir you and wake you and drive you insane. This is Lish’s win-by-points book. He’s not a bad writer* (and I’m not so discouraged that I won’t read Preparations), but when literature has the power to knock you out or chokehold you (i.e., take your breath away)—and you’ve been there, you, a reader of fiction have been there, on the canvas, out cold, unconscious, overwhelmed by blunt force or under-oxygenated—when you’ve been there, something like this, which has proper technique, so to speak—which jabs and crosses and parries and counters—something like this just ends up feeling so disappointing. And this isn’t to say that Lish hasn’t dared greatly enough or that he hasn’t scrawled using enough of his own blood: the contents here are certainly personal and thus fragile – but—and I could be wrong here—like Adesanya, Lish here seems to be so focussed on retaining his belt (i.e., his post-Preparations reputation) that his effort just ends up feeling contrived and boring.
*I mean, he clearly isn’t,** but I think Gloria in its published state leaves a lot to be desired, and one can’t help wonder what an uncompromising editor would have demanded of it, and Lish. The irony.
**Although, the dialogue in this is actually quite bad, quite often, in my opinion.
December 13, 2023
I picked this book up based on the blurb that mentioned a 15-year-old boy caring for his single mother, who is failing from ALS. I assumed I was going to encounter a perhaps sentimental hard-luck story about a kid’s devotion. Instead, I was left breathless by this masterful, high-powered roller-coaster that had me riding peaks and valleys of emotion as Corey, the kid, deals with the evil his biological father brings into their lives when he shows up without warning. The story takes place over four years and is set in working-class neighbourhoods in Boston during the 2000s. Corey’s labour is physical: work gangs on construction sites and brutal cage-match fighting. Violence —physical, mental and emotional—is ever-present, as the menace his father poses mounts inexorably.
September 30, 2021
I found the way this book handled ALS really moving. The disease is everywhere but also absent. Gloria's caregivers are so much more than that and we get so much life from them too.
The geographical specificity was impressive but not for me. I felt overwhelmed by it.
The geographical specificity was impressive but not for me. I felt overwhelmed by it.
January 31, 2022
Lish is an American Dostoevsky.
September 27, 2024
Not for the faint of heart. Very real and precise. It will gut you. Lots of testosterone and subtle tenderness. Too many similes—sometimes one every sentence on a page.
September 12, 2022
I’ve finished Atticus Lish’s book on “The War for Gloria.” It’s the story of a young, working-class man in Boston trying heroically to support his dying mother while dealing with his distant, charismatic albeit un-empathic father.
On the positive side, the conception and story line are good, the characters are real, and the atmosphere is genuine. On the negative side the book is way overdone for my taste.
MUST the portrayal of EACH venue be so tiresomely gritty, down to repeated adjectives about gross smells and tacky atmosphere? Must the description of EACH person’s clothing be SO detailed? Must the delineation of EACH person’s physique be SO un-squeamish? Does the revelation of EACH person’s character require SO much tangential dialogue? Does the description of cage fighting, street fighting, and Brazilian Ju Jitsu HAVE to be repeated over and over again? The reader gets the point
It’s exaggerated. One sees this sort of thing in the movies. In a really first-rate movie, the actors speak their lines convincingly and they emote enough through facial expression and body movement to endow the scenes with realism. And the story moves along. But in second-rate movies, where the actors and director are enamored of their own artistry, the emoting becomes exaggerated and they prolong it long after the point is made, and the movie becomes a bore.
I call it “creator’s narcissism.” In literature it is the author’s drive to exalt himself as a creative genius at the expense of a flowing yarn. I really don’t want to slog through endless and often unnecessary conversations or tiresome descriptions of minor events long after the point has been conveyed.
It’s a shame really. In all, I rate the book as B-. But it could have been an A.
On the positive side, the conception and story line are good, the characters are real, and the atmosphere is genuine. On the negative side the book is way overdone for my taste.
MUST the portrayal of EACH venue be so tiresomely gritty, down to repeated adjectives about gross smells and tacky atmosphere? Must the description of EACH person’s clothing be SO detailed? Must the delineation of EACH person’s physique be SO un-squeamish? Does the revelation of EACH person’s character require SO much tangential dialogue? Does the description of cage fighting, street fighting, and Brazilian Ju Jitsu HAVE to be repeated over and over again? The reader gets the point
It’s exaggerated. One sees this sort of thing in the movies. In a really first-rate movie, the actors speak their lines convincingly and they emote enough through facial expression and body movement to endow the scenes with realism. And the story moves along. But in second-rate movies, where the actors and director are enamored of their own artistry, the emoting becomes exaggerated and they prolong it long after the point is made, and the movie becomes a bore.
I call it “creator’s narcissism.” In literature it is the author’s drive to exalt himself as a creative genius at the expense of a flowing yarn. I really don’t want to slog through endless and often unnecessary conversations or tiresome descriptions of minor events long after the point has been conveyed.
It’s a shame really. In all, I rate the book as B-. But it could have been an A.
September 25, 2021
3.5. Would have been a 4 if not for the ending chapters. Not sure how necessary those were.
August 29, 2021
I keep looking at the reviews on the back of the book to see what I missed. "Searing", "a love story" and on and on. I didn't see that. I didn't read that. I was compelled to fly through this book until I finished with sheer gratitude that it was done.
Thank you to Goodreads for a copy for my review.
Thank you to Goodreads for a copy for my review.
October 6, 2021
Loved PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT LIFE, and this is similarly dark, propulsive, well written. There aren’t enough good books with working class characters and I’m glad this is one. Some of the prose is outstanding, and the dark places American “masculinity” leads are, as in PREPARATION, exquisitely drawn, as is the tenderness it may be capable of.
September 7, 2021
Immediately ordering Preparation for the Next Life. Engrossing read. Heartbreaking but equally empathetic and thought-provoking.
January 29, 2022
Parts of this book are amazingly well written. Character plays a strong part of the story while some vagueness detracts from it.
May 28, 2022
3,7 Some of the writing seemed sloppy and parts were so predictable and overly dramatic. It wasn't bad, but I can't recommend it either.
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