About this item
Highlights
- Eighteen boyfriends, twenty-three jobs, and one ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice: Temporary casts a hilarious and tender eye toward the struggle for happiness under late capitalism.
- About the Author: Hilary Leichter is author of the novel Temporary.
- 208 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
- Series Name: Emily Books
Description
About the Book
Eighteen boyfriends, twenty-three jobs, and one ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice: Temporary casts a hilarious and tender eye toward the struggle for happiness under late capitalism.
Book Synopsis
Eighteen boyfriends, twenty-three jobs, and one ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice: Temporary casts a hilarious and tender eye toward the struggle for happiness under late capitalism.
Review Quotes
Shortlisted for the 2021 Firecracker Award
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for a Debut Novel
NPR, "Favorite Books of 2020" Publishers Weekly, "Best Books of 2020" Chicago Tribune, "Books to Read in Winter 2020" Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2020" Bustle, "Must-Read Books of 2020"
I-D, "Best Books of 2020"
Refinery29, "Best Indie Books of 2020"
Bustle, "Must-Read Books 2020"
Thrillist, "Best Books of 2020"
Tor.com, "Best Books of 2020"
"In [Temporary], you can hear an old note, a note I've missed in American fiction, and am surprised to have noticed myself missing-for so long it seemed dominant to the point of imperishability. 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. . . . This novel could have easily sagged into dogma, but Leichter keeps the narrative 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." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"[A] delirious and deeply humane satire. . . . Temporary has the manic, goofing energy of a lounge act." --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"A batty, playful satire, Temporary twists the jargon and anxieties of a millennial gig economy into a dreamscape of spires and scaffolding through which we swing as our narrator seeks out her steadiness. . . . In the trippy, shape-shifting architecture of Temporary, we come to discover that the landscape around us is constructed on shaky foundations, but also that there's comfort in uncanny in-betweenness." --Los Angeles Times
"A brisk, wildly imaginative first novel. . . . Leichter's deeper interest is in mining how transient, insecure work inflects our private life--if it even permits a private life. Can we afford to stop working? Do we remember how?" --The New York Times, "Editors' Choice"
"[A] refreshingly whimsical debut that explores the agonies of millennial life under late capitalism with the kind of surrealist humor that will offer anxious minds a reprieve from our calamitous news cycle. . . . As a book about the brutality of the work world, Temporary is a great success. Leichter has managed to blend the oddball and the existential into a tale of millennial woe that's both dreadful and hilarious at once. This book should be recommended reading for workers-and essential reading for nonessential workers-everywhere." --The Washington Post
"A temp worker's bailiwick expands from office admin duties to sailing on a pirate ship and performing absurd tasks such as subbing for a barnacle on a rock. The flights from one assignment to another transition seamlessly through captivating dream logic and magical, inventive imagery, leading to staggering insights about the nature of existence." --Publishers Weekly, "Best Fiction of 2020"
"Temporary sits in a constellation of works by writers like Jen George, Eugene Li
About the Author
Hilary Leichter is author of the novel Temporary. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New Yorker, Harper's, n+1, Bookforum, Conjunctions, the Cut, and American Short Fiction. She teaches at Columbia University.