Temporary
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £6.49
Publisher 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leichter's funny, absurdist debut cleverly explores a capitalist society taken to a dreamlike extreme. The narrator is a temporary an employee of the world, whose temp agency can place people in different jobs, from the banal (basic office work) to the incredibly unlikely (subbing in for a barnacle by clinging to a rock). She has 18 unnamed boyfriends, who bond in her apartment while she is gone. Her boss, a woman named Farren, places the lead on a pirate ship, where she is asked to kill a hostage. She rebels, only to end up working as an assistant to an assassin. Though the jobs are temporary, the narrator accumulates objects such as stolen boots, and a necklace containing the ashes of the Chairman of the Board, whose ghost is a supporting character. A particularly strong section comes in the middle of the book, when the narrator remembers her first assignment: her mother leaves her to wander through an empty house and close its doors over and over again. Though consistently zany, there are moments of profundity: always coming back to her many boyfriends and the desire to realize "the steadiness" (a tongue-in-cheek aspiration to find a fulfilling, lifelong career), the heroine finally finds peace through her conversations with the Chairman. Leichter's cutting, hilarious critique of the American dream will appeal to fans of Italo Calvino.
