The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
In Temporary, a brisk, wildly imaginative first novel…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.
From the Publisher
Praise for Temporary
Shortlisted for the 2021 Firecracker Award
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award
A New York Times Editors' Choice
An NPR Favorite Book of 2020
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020
A Bustle Must-Read Book of 2020
An I-D Best Book of 2020
A Thrillist Best Book of 2020
A Tor.com Best Book of 2020
A Refinery29 Best Indie Book of 2020
A Library Journal Best Debut Novel of 2020
“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, The 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.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Leichter has managed to blend the oddball and the existential into a tale of millennial woe that’s both dreadful and hilarious at once.” —The Washington Post
“[A] deeply hilarious, surreal manifesto against late-stage capitalism, all wrapped up in a mushroom trip. So, you know, exactly what we need in 2020. . . . I felt as if Leichter knew just what this year had in store for us.” —Tim Herrera, The New York Times
“Leichter’s funny, absurdist debut cleverly explores a capitalist society taken to a dreamlike extreme . . . her cutting, hilarious critique of the American dream will appeal to fans of Italo Calvino.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Refreshingly original.” —The Chicago Tribune
“[Leichter] takes numbing routines to dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) extremes, delivering subversive entertainment in the process.” —Entertainment Weekly
“If a Salvador Dali painting were reimagined as a contemporary novel, it would be Leichter’s Temporary, a trippy commentary on workplace culture and the gig economy. . . . With beautiful prose and colorful imagery, it’s a poetic tour de force.” —Parade
“Leichter’s voice is lively, practically sprightly, and offers a smart balance to the big question she asks—When everything is considered work, how do we live outside of it?” —Vulture
“[A] surreal picaresque. . . . By embracing absurdity, Leichter evades realism while borrowing from reality.” —The Baffler
“This book is very funny. . . . It’s contemporary but kind of feels like a much older book.” —Kevin Nguyen
“Wickedly charming.” —Mary South
“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
Kirkus Reviews
2019-12-09
A young temp searches for permanence in Leichter's whimsically surreal fable of late-stage capitalism.
The nameless protagonist of Leichter's debut leads a temporary existence. "The calls come on Mondays and Fridays, flanking each week with ephemeral placements," she explains. It's her job to fill in for others, and she takes it seriously; after all, as she read once on a granola bar wrapper, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job." All people are replaceable, but the jobs must continue. Filling in for the chairman of the board at Major Corp ("the very, very major corporation"), it is her job to sign documents and stamp dates and run meetings and wear fashionable scarves. "Everyone has a parcel of work they don't want to do themselves, and what can I say? I'm a purveyor of finished parcels," she says simply. Soon, she leaves the city and her cadre of casual boyfriends—her culinary boyfriend and her tallest boyfriend and her earnest boyfriend, a designated boyfriend for each possible purpose—for a series of increasingly absurd assignments. On a pirate ship, she fills in for someone named Darla, swabbing the decks and cleaning the company buckets, adjusting her temperament to best channel real Darla. But then Darla returns—she was only visiting her grandparents in Florida—and our unnamed protagonist is on to her next transient post, filling in at a small murder business, with logistics. She comes from a long line of temporaries, but still, she hopes it is temporary, being a temporary. The lucky temps ascend to a state of permanence—"the steadiness," they call it. "My dream job," she tells her earnest boyfriend, "is a job that stays." The novel, playful bordering on twee, is not especially subtle in its commentary—a cohesive identity? in this economy?—but it's clever and strange and, in the end, unexpectedly hopeful, less a biting gig-economy satire than a wistful 21st-century myth.
A dreamy meditation on how we construct who we are.
