Temporary

Review A brisk, wildly imaginative first novel. you can hear an old note in American fiction. [the] violent, surreal, often cartoonish scenarios delivered deadpan that draw attention to the freakishness of ordinary life - from writers like Donald Barthelme, Gordon Lish, Ben Marcus. Crisp, swift and sardonic, Temporary reads like a comic and mournful Alice in Wonderland set in the gig economy, an eerily precise portrait of ourselves in a cracked mirror. ― New York Times A narrative so deliciously allusive and disarmingly literal that this reader kept thinking maximum glee had been attained, only for the glee to somehow grow even more maximal just a few sentences later. -- Helen Oyeyemi The book joins an emerging genre of millennial workplace novels... In the tradition of satirists from Jonathan Swift to Helen DeWitt, Leichter builds a world that's absurd, but familiar enough to give pause. Weighty questions underlie the wackiness as the temp's misadventures roll towards a resolution. ― Financial Times Masterful. Recommended reading for workers - and essential reading for nonessential workers - everywhere. ― Washington Post [Temporary is] absurd and dreamlike, sad and funny, and I totally lost myself in it. Leichter is particularly brilliant on the nature of people being replaceable or interchangeable. A bizarre yet compelling book. ― Daily Mail Cheekily pertinent and disturbingly relatable. ― The Herald In Temporary, the quest for gainful employment is epic; operatic; deliciously, sunnily, terrifyingly entertaining. Hilary Leichter is a conjurer of rare talent. -- Kelly Link Leichterworld is built with the author's astonishing heart and ear, and it's a world of delightful, ever-escalating absurdity, mesmerizing prose and a poignant serio-comic vision. Temporary is a demented, de-tuned love song for the working life. Hilary Leichter possesses the brute force of language and imagination to create ultra-vivid worlds, suffused with an eerie weirdo beauty. It is Leichter's brilliance that these invented worlds reflect so directly, blindingly, on the secret, mythical workings of our own. An absurd, laugh-out-loud funny critique of (and antidote to) the dystopia that is late-stage capitalism. ― Buzzfeed A thrilling, subversive, mordantly funny look at what it means to be alive today - aka what it means to have to work . . . Post-pandemic? It feels even more relevant, a reminder that living to work is really no life at all. ― Refinery29 Bizarre, relevant and resonant, this is one of those books that'll end up tatty and dog-eared as you lend it to everyone you know. ― Stylist Product Description SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE 2021 'Terrifyingly entertaining.' Kelly Link 'Masterful.' Washington Post ''Alice in Wonderland set in the gig economy.' New York Times 'What is this?' Los Angeles Times Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's 2020 First Novel Prize 18 boyfriends. 23 jobs. One ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice. Welcome to the world of the Temporary. 'There is nothing more personal than doing your job'. So goes the motto of the Temporary, as she takes job after job, in search of steadiness, belonging, and something to call her own. Aided by her bespoke agency and a cast of boyfriends - each allotted their own task (the handy boyfriend, the culinary boyfriend, the real estate boyfriend) - she is happy to fill in for any of us: for the Chairman of the Board, a ghost, a murderer, a mother. Even for you, and for me. Wild, hopeful, infinitely sad and infinitely funny, Temporary is the smartest, most humane story of what it is to work and live, here and now. Book Description The cult American hit - 'Alice in Wonderland set in the gig economy' (New York Times) About the Author Hilary Leichter has been published in the New York Times, n+1, the New Yorker, the Cut, and Conjunctions. She teaches writing at Columbia University and has been awarded fellowships from the Folger Shakespear