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Temporary
In Temporary, a young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
208 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2020
607 people are currently reading
24.5k people want to read
About the author
Hilary Leichter
4books301followersHilary Leichter is the author of the novels Temporary and Terrace Story. She has been a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Prize, and was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her writing has appeared in n+1, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and her work in Harper’s Magazine won the 2021 National Magazine Award in Fiction. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,176 reviews
September 4, 2023
�No one is ever exactly who they claim to be, but some people are closer than others.�
Finding yourself in the hustle and bustle of the world can be a challenge. This is exacerbated in a society where a sense of self as mirrored by the world seems inextricable from your job. Hilary Leichter’s debut novel, Temporary, takes an insightful and comedic aim at this existential dilemma with wonderful results. Like an universe written to accommodate the dark whimsicality of , this is a playful novel rife with creativity and emotional candor. From uproariously funny to downright devastating and everything in between, Temporary is a whirlwind of emotions and insights that hit all the right notes. Leichter elegantly creates a playful, absurdist reality fleshed out with its own mythology that digs deep into the emotional undercurrents of the gig economy and the dehumanizing ways people are seemingly only valued for their corporeal use-value and profitability of services.
�The surest path to permanence was to do my placements, and to do them well.�
Leichter perfectly captures the essence of temporary employment. Be it for temp services, such as the elaborate temp agency the narrator is a star employee for, or stepping-stone jobs one may have in their life, a person is inevitably faced with the existential quandaries of identity when all your worth seems to hinge on your ability to perform an impermanent job. In Temporary’s mischievous reality there is a subclass of people--aptly called ‘temporaries�--who exist only to fulfill these fleeting roles. They are the stand-ins for ‘real people�, so to speak. A Temporary’s primary concern in life is to find �the steadiness�, or permanent placement in life. The life of a temporary is constant ennui on a search for meaning they can take hold of, a feeling we can all identify with.
What is most charming is the mythology that Leichter crafts within the novel. �The gods created the First Temporary so they could take a break,� the mythos begins in a story that weaves throughout the novel. We see the world of the Temporaries who are created to help the Gods but are never granted a sense of permanence, which reads like a Genesis-style curse that they must forever toil without end. The world building here is fantastic and the way characters reappear grants a small-world feeling that is less a lack of scope as it is a surrealist approach to demonstrating how we are all affected by each other. The narrator is frequently forced to see consequences of her previous placements play out in the lives of others which points to the moral responsibilities we have as a member of society, one of the many things that are quickly shucked aside for the sake of profit. While we might not all have to weigh out the moral responsibility of dropping bombs from a blimp, as happens here, the way we normalize marketing techniques like , our complicity through complacency with late capitalism, or for whom we labor in order to enrich and what they do with that money (or what they don’t do), affects society in systemic ways from which we cannot simply wash our hands.
�’Do you value me?� she asks. ‘Of course,� I say, patting her round, bright skull. Like polishing a prize.�
Temporary is a hilarious romp through the many jobs of our unnamed narrator: CEO, pirate, a human barnacle, a murderer’s accomplice, even a pamphleteer for a witch among others. Each offers a different probing perspective on the way human life becomes commoditized and the absurdity of the novel becomes a perfect lens through which we can laugh at the absurdity of our marketplace society. A mark for the murderer through which she is employed--in a truly moving segment of the books that is likely the envy of the screenwriters for the show Dexter--is a bank robber who confesses that she is hired to rob banks by other banks, who then in turn hire her to rob the others back until the banks ultimately hire the hitman to kill their own bank robber. Leicther explores the way we are all pawns for the economy, our lives played out like marionettes made to dance by and for the whims of the ruling class.
Impostor Syndrome plays a large role in the novel. �It takes an aggressive empathy to accurately replace a person,� thinks the narrator as she struggles to authentically fill the roles of a woman on leave. The sense of identity becomes blurred as we all struggle to play the parts we are given in life. The Temporaries are all filling in for other people--sometimes even other Temporaries--and are often met with the reality that they are not, in fact, the person who’s shoes they are made to fill. The Temporaries never even have names, just descriptions, as names seem reserved only for the people they are replacing and thus their own is interchangeable. In a way, the steadiness is an overcoming of this guilt of inauthenticity, though it is much more nuanced than that. However, in a society that values us more for our use-value than our authenticity, the Impostor Syndrome looms large and the search for identity is marred by the realization that our identity is often not what is wanted. When at her most vulnerable, the narrator is often met with corporate buzzwords and workplace motivators rather than meaningful human interaction. Even when it does occur it is brief and inevitably swallowed up by workplace politics. This is where Leicther is at the top of her game, however, and the workplace humor here makes this heir to the corporate lampooning throne that the film Office Space held in the 90’s.
In lesser hands, the novel would merely veer off into a series of gags and gimmicks, but Leichter grounds it with a hardy emotional weight. The reader is treated to humorous banter, though, the whole novel long and it never gets dull, such as when the narrator finds herself filling in for a crewmember of an internet piracy company that has rebranded as actual pirates:
Amidst the constant quips and gaffs on HR rhetoric and office society--Leichter keeps almost all interactions, conversations and life within the confines of workplace life to make you feel smothered by the lack of an outside-of-work existence--there is a charming and bittersweet yearning for identity that beautifully juxtaposes its melancholy with the absurdity of the novel to create a wistful, yet wholesome, balance. An early flashback scene to the narrator’s first placement as a household ghost opening and shutting doors becomes such a forlorn coming-of-age episode of failure that you practically read it in dodgy sepia tones. Without giving away anything, we watch the narrator make friends with another house ghost only to see their desperation when things begin to fall apart and suddenly the comedy of the novel gives way to a real welcomed emotional depth that casts a long, vague shadow over the novel.
�Living is also a state of mourning.�
Temporary becomes a deeply existential work in the second half as the humor of, say, the countless, meaningless boyfriends (the segments of all her boyfriend’s moving in together and forming a book club is pure joy) becomes an avenue to explore a search for identity in meaninglessness. Having formed an identity solely based on workplace performance, cracks begin to appear when she realizes her boss is, simply, a boss who will discard her at a moments notice and not a true friend. Flashbacks of death enter the picture, people leaving, and suddenly the notion of temporality takes on a new meaning. �She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends,� the narrator thinks, �and desired that kind of permanence all the same.� Do we try in vain to find permanence in an impermanent world, going from one quest of identity to the next hoping to catch meaning like some kind of hunt? There is a particularly heartbreaking section when the narrator tries to be a temporary fill-in for a mother and watches the child grow as well as grow to hate her while Leichter forces the reader to truly examine the impermanence that makes up life and our fleeting moments that, try as we might, we cannot hold onto forever.
However, this is a comedy and Leichter swoops in to tie all the existential anxiety together in a truly empowering final act that feels deserved and not a forced twist. There is beauty in the search for identity, and beauty in impermanence, and Leichter leaves us on a high note of affirmation. But I shan’t say anymore, because you really need to read this!
Sometimes a novel will come to you when you need it most. Temporary was that literary angel for me. I picked it up days before my state shut down for quarantine and my political anxieties had their legs cut out from under them by them as we all plunged into isolation. Temporary scratched the itch I really needed by being engaging and hilarious escapism without skimping on the cutting social commentary I crave. During a period of time when the lack of social and financial safety-nets in the USA were brought under a spotlight, a comical novel that explores the plight of paycheck-to-paycheck employees and the gig economy was a perfect ride to embark upon. As someone who has gone from odd job to odd job myself (not to the extent of absurdity as in the novel, but at one point in my life I was a coffee delivery driver by day and wedding bartender at night, so I can empathize), this was a total delight. Leichter takes a bold and brilliant look at the ways we are ground down by late capitalism through a searing existential inquiry of self-identity under these conditions and the result is pure bliss.
4.5 / 5
�...the bodies unite to form a rare kind of matter with enough continental drift, with enough momentum, with enough coverage to cover the entire world, replace it clean and fresh and new, and so in this way, Laurette thought, maybe we can finally start over.�
Finding yourself in the hustle and bustle of the world can be a challenge. This is exacerbated in a society where a sense of self as mirrored by the world seems inextricable from your job. Hilary Leichter’s debut novel, Temporary, takes an insightful and comedic aim at this existential dilemma with wonderful results. Like an universe written to accommodate the dark whimsicality of , this is a playful novel rife with creativity and emotional candor. From uproariously funny to downright devastating and everything in between, Temporary is a whirlwind of emotions and insights that hit all the right notes. Leichter elegantly creates a playful, absurdist reality fleshed out with its own mythology that digs deep into the emotional undercurrents of the gig economy and the dehumanizing ways people are seemingly only valued for their corporeal use-value and profitability of services.
�The surest path to permanence was to do my placements, and to do them well.�
Leichter perfectly captures the essence of temporary employment. Be it for temp services, such as the elaborate temp agency the narrator is a star employee for, or stepping-stone jobs one may have in their life, a person is inevitably faced with the existential quandaries of identity when all your worth seems to hinge on your ability to perform an impermanent job. In Temporary’s mischievous reality there is a subclass of people--aptly called ‘temporaries�--who exist only to fulfill these fleeting roles. They are the stand-ins for ‘real people�, so to speak. A Temporary’s primary concern in life is to find �the steadiness�, or permanent placement in life. The life of a temporary is constant ennui on a search for meaning they can take hold of, a feeling we can all identify with.
What is most charming is the mythology that Leichter crafts within the novel. �The gods created the First Temporary so they could take a break,� the mythos begins in a story that weaves throughout the novel. We see the world of the Temporaries who are created to help the Gods but are never granted a sense of permanence, which reads like a Genesis-style curse that they must forever toil without end. The world building here is fantastic and the way characters reappear grants a small-world feeling that is less a lack of scope as it is a surrealist approach to demonstrating how we are all affected by each other. The narrator is frequently forced to see consequences of her previous placements play out in the lives of others which points to the moral responsibilities we have as a member of society, one of the many things that are quickly shucked aside for the sake of profit. While we might not all have to weigh out the moral responsibility of dropping bombs from a blimp, as happens here, the way we normalize marketing techniques like , our complicity through complacency with late capitalism, or for whom we labor in order to enrich and what they do with that money (or what they don’t do), affects society in systemic ways from which we cannot simply wash our hands.
�’Do you value me?� she asks. ‘Of course,� I say, patting her round, bright skull. Like polishing a prize.�
Temporary is a hilarious romp through the many jobs of our unnamed narrator: CEO, pirate, a human barnacle, a murderer’s accomplice, even a pamphleteer for a witch among others. Each offers a different probing perspective on the way human life becomes commoditized and the absurdity of the novel becomes a perfect lens through which we can laugh at the absurdity of our marketplace society. A mark for the murderer through which she is employed--in a truly moving segment of the books that is likely the envy of the screenwriters for the show Dexter--is a bank robber who confesses that she is hired to rob banks by other banks, who then in turn hire her to rob the others back until the banks ultimately hire the hitman to kill their own bank robber. Leicther explores the way we are all pawns for the economy, our lives played out like marionettes made to dance by and for the whims of the ruling class.
Impostor Syndrome plays a large role in the novel. �It takes an aggressive empathy to accurately replace a person,� thinks the narrator as she struggles to authentically fill the roles of a woman on leave. The sense of identity becomes blurred as we all struggle to play the parts we are given in life. The Temporaries are all filling in for other people--sometimes even other Temporaries--and are often met with the reality that they are not, in fact, the person who’s shoes they are made to fill. The Temporaries never even have names, just descriptions, as names seem reserved only for the people they are replacing and thus their own is interchangeable. In a way, the steadiness is an overcoming of this guilt of inauthenticity, though it is much more nuanced than that. However, in a society that values us more for our use-value than our authenticity, the Impostor Syndrome looms large and the search for identity is marred by the realization that our identity is often not what is wanted. When at her most vulnerable, the narrator is often met with corporate buzzwords and workplace motivators rather than meaningful human interaction. Even when it does occur it is brief and inevitably swallowed up by workplace politics. This is where Leicther is at the top of her game, however, and the workplace humor here makes this heir to the corporate lampooning throne that the film Office Space held in the 90’s.
In lesser hands, the novel would merely veer off into a series of gags and gimmicks, but Leichter grounds it with a hardy emotional weight. The reader is treated to humorous banter, though, the whole novel long and it never gets dull, such as when the narrator finds herself filling in for a crewmember of an internet piracy company that has rebranded as actual pirates:
�There are only a few kinds of jobs in this world...jobs on land, jobs at sea, jobs in the sky, jobs of the mind, and working remotely.�
‘You mean like working from home?� I ask
‘No,� the pirate captain says. ‘Working remotely is what we call being dead. Pirate lingo.�
‘Oh, sure! Like Davey Jones’s locker?�
‘No, no,� he says exasperated. ‘That’s where we keep the office supplies.�
Amidst the constant quips and gaffs on HR rhetoric and office society--Leichter keeps almost all interactions, conversations and life within the confines of workplace life to make you feel smothered by the lack of an outside-of-work existence--there is a charming and bittersweet yearning for identity that beautifully juxtaposes its melancholy with the absurdity of the novel to create a wistful, yet wholesome, balance. An early flashback scene to the narrator’s first placement as a household ghost opening and shutting doors becomes such a forlorn coming-of-age episode of failure that you practically read it in dodgy sepia tones. Without giving away anything, we watch the narrator make friends with another house ghost only to see their desperation when things begin to fall apart and suddenly the comedy of the novel gives way to a real welcomed emotional depth that casts a long, vague shadow over the novel.
�Living is also a state of mourning.�
Temporary becomes a deeply existential work in the second half as the humor of, say, the countless, meaningless boyfriends (the segments of all her boyfriend’s moving in together and forming a book club is pure joy) becomes an avenue to explore a search for identity in meaninglessness. Having formed an identity solely based on workplace performance, cracks begin to appear when she realizes her boss is, simply, a boss who will discard her at a moments notice and not a true friend. Flashbacks of death enter the picture, people leaving, and suddenly the notion of temporality takes on a new meaning. �She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends,� the narrator thinks, �and desired that kind of permanence all the same.� Do we try in vain to find permanence in an impermanent world, going from one quest of identity to the next hoping to catch meaning like some kind of hunt? There is a particularly heartbreaking section when the narrator tries to be a temporary fill-in for a mother and watches the child grow as well as grow to hate her while Leichter forces the reader to truly examine the impermanence that makes up life and our fleeting moments that, try as we might, we cannot hold onto forever.
However, this is a comedy and Leichter swoops in to tie all the existential anxiety together in a truly empowering final act that feels deserved and not a forced twist. There is beauty in the search for identity, and beauty in impermanence, and Leichter leaves us on a high note of affirmation. But I shan’t say anymore, because you really need to read this!
Sometimes a novel will come to you when you need it most. Temporary was that literary angel for me. I picked it up days before my state shut down for quarantine and my political anxieties had their legs cut out from under them by them as we all plunged into isolation. Temporary scratched the itch I really needed by being engaging and hilarious escapism without skimping on the cutting social commentary I crave. During a period of time when the lack of social and financial safety-nets in the USA were brought under a spotlight, a comical novel that explores the plight of paycheck-to-paycheck employees and the gig economy was a perfect ride to embark upon. As someone who has gone from odd job to odd job myself (not to the extent of absurdity as in the novel, but at one point in my life I was a coffee delivery driver by day and wedding bartender at night, so I can empathize), this was a total delight. Leichter takes a bold and brilliant look at the ways we are ground down by late capitalism through a searing existential inquiry of self-identity under these conditions and the result is pure bliss.
4.5 / 5
�...the bodies unite to form a rare kind of matter with enough continental drift, with enough momentum, with enough coverage to cover the entire world, replace it clean and fresh and new, and so in this way, Laurette thought, maybe we can finally start over.�
October 6, 2019
Fun, funky, quick book - the unnamed lead, a Temporary, fills in for a series of jobs in a kinetic, never-ending sequence of absurdist invention. Like a more humorous The STORY OF MY TEETH, the chained scenes have a dream logic all their own. I particularly loved a long sequence in the center of the book called "First Work," which provides a necessary emotional underpinning to the zaniness.
October 10, 2022
4.5 rounded up
This was such as an odd read but I sort of loved it! It was extremely quirky and highly original but not in a tedious way. The length was just about right, anymore and I might have got tired of it.
This was such as an odd read but I sort of loved it! It was extremely quirky and highly original but not in a tedious way. The length was just about right, anymore and I might have got tired of it.
March 30, 2023
Lighthearted but with an underlying sadness and feeling of emptiness. Leaning on the dystopia. Explores work themes in a world where a job is your only important identity. Temporary jobs but always in search of the one that'll stick. Whimsy, childlike/innocent narration, funny, heartbreaking. One of the best books I've ever read.
August 27, 2021
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Temporary is a wonderfully bizarre novel. Readers who prefer to read stories that are grounded in reality or that are ruled by logic and reason may be better off steering clear from the sheer absurdity that is Temporary.
Within this novel Hilary Leichter takes to the extreme the role of a temporary worker and the world which she writes of only vaguely resemble our own. In her hyperbolic vision of a capitalistic society generations of temporaries spend their lives in pursuit of 'the steadiness' (gainful employment/permanency) The temporary positions which one can be assigned to have a Kafkaesque quality to them: opening and closing doors in a house, filling in for a parrot on a pirate ship, assisting a murderer, working as a body scanner that detects emotion, pushing random buttons...each temporary role is dictated by arbitrary rules and nonsensical tasks, or characterised by confounding hierarchies and even sexual harassment.
The narrator, like her mother and her grandmother before her, goes from temporary position to temporary position with an upbeat can-do attitude. To 'work', to do her job, is everything to her, regardless of what the job actually entails. She has several boyfriends, whom she distinguishes by referring to their physical attributes, such as 'the tall boyfriend', or their profession, such as 'the culinary boyfriend, rather than their names.
Throughout the course of the narrative the narrator finds herself doing increasingly outlandish gigs.
The story is ridiculous, and so are the characters and their interactions. But it is also hilariously absurd. Having worked as a temp, and being too aware of the way in which temporary workers are often regarded as little more than disposable cutlery, I deeply enjoyed Leichter's critique of modern society, particularly the gig economy.
The effervescent writing style brought to mind novels by Japanese authors such as , , and while the protagonist's fanciful narration, as well as the peculiar people she encounters, echoed Lewis Carroll's . Temporary is just endearingly unapologetic in its weirdness.
Through addition of purply metaphors, frequent rapid-firing of words (so that phrases seem to have been breathlessly blurted out), and ping-pong dialogues, Leichter's magnifies the weird atmosphere of her story.
Underneath this novel's layer of surreality lies an all too relevant tale. Clever, funny, nonsensical, Leichter's debut novel is a fable for the modern age.
/ / /View all my reviews on ŷ
“The gods created the First Temporary so they could take a break.�
Temporary is a wonderfully bizarre novel. Readers who prefer to read stories that are grounded in reality or that are ruled by logic and reason may be better off steering clear from the sheer absurdity that is Temporary.
“She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends and desired that kind of permanence all the same.�
Within this novel Hilary Leichter takes to the extreme the role of a temporary worker and the world which she writes of only vaguely resemble our own. In her hyperbolic vision of a capitalistic society generations of temporaries spend their lives in pursuit of 'the steadiness' (gainful employment/permanency) The temporary positions which one can be assigned to have a Kafkaesque quality to them: opening and closing doors in a house, filling in for a parrot on a pirate ship, assisting a murderer, working as a body scanner that detects emotion, pushing random buttons...each temporary role is dictated by arbitrary rules and nonsensical tasks, or characterised by confounding hierarchies and even sexual harassment.
The narrator, like her mother and her grandmother before her, goes from temporary position to temporary position with an upbeat can-do attitude. To 'work', to do her job, is everything to her, regardless of what the job actually entails. She has several boyfriends, whom she distinguishes by referring to their physical attributes, such as 'the tall boyfriend', or their profession, such as 'the culinary boyfriend, rather than their names.
Throughout the course of the narrative the narrator finds herself doing increasingly outlandish gigs.
The story is ridiculous, and so are the characters and their interactions. But it is also hilariously absurd. Having worked as a temp, and being too aware of the way in which temporary workers are often regarded as little more than disposable cutlery, I deeply enjoyed Leichter's critique of modern society, particularly the gig economy.
The effervescent writing style brought to mind novels by Japanese authors such as , , and while the protagonist's fanciful narration, as well as the peculiar people she encounters, echoed Lewis Carroll's . Temporary is just endearingly unapologetic in its weirdness.
“We drink some water side by side, our bodies full of fluids, of blood and acid and methods of hydration, caffeination, intoxication.�
Through addition of purply metaphors, frequent rapid-firing of words (so that phrases seem to have been breathlessly blurted out), and ping-pong dialogues, Leichter's magnifies the weird atmosphere of her story.
“What were you thinking?�
“I was just thinking differently.�
“Who said you get to think differently?�
“No one.�
Underneath this novel's layer of surreality lies an all too relevant tale. Clever, funny, nonsensical, Leichter's debut novel is a fable for the modern age.
/ / /View all my reviews on ŷ
September 18, 2021
'Temporary' reads like a series of dreams; filled with fleeting moments that defy all logic and rationality, Hilary Leichter's debut novel is an excellent piece of absurdist fiction.
Set in an alternate world disguised as reality, the novel follows the life of a young temp working a series of strange jobs while on a quest to find meaning and fulfillment. Although the story's twists and turns are totally bizarre, their metaphorical meanings make them resonate deeply. While work and employment are central themes throughout, the book's messages about life, identity, and relationships, show how work can often consume all of these things, or provide us with inauthentic versions of them. The curtain is also drawn on the idea of this 'better life' or 'happy ending' that we always seem to be searching for but never permanently obtain.
Imaginative and emotional in every sense, 'Temporary' is also unpredictable and adventurous from beginning to end.
Set in an alternate world disguised as reality, the novel follows the life of a young temp working a series of strange jobs while on a quest to find meaning and fulfillment. Although the story's twists and turns are totally bizarre, their metaphorical meanings make them resonate deeply. While work and employment are central themes throughout, the book's messages about life, identity, and relationships, show how work can often consume all of these things, or provide us with inauthentic versions of them. The curtain is also drawn on the idea of this 'better life' or 'happy ending' that we always seem to be searching for but never permanently obtain.
Imaginative and emotional in every sense, 'Temporary' is also unpredictable and adventurous from beginning to end.
January 15, 2020
In a strange, playful vision of our world (or something like it), the temporary, who is usually (but not always) a woman, dreams of (but rarely, if ever, attains) 'the steadiness', 'a job that stays'. The narrator is one such temporary, from a long line of temporaries. For these transient citizens, the legend of the 'first temp' has become the equivalent of a Bible story. A platitude � 'there is nothing more personal than doing your job' � is repeated like a prayer. In keeping with her impermanent status, the narrator has a harem of boyfriends, but never a relationship.
Here, anything can be a temp role. As a girl, the narrator's first job is to open and close all the doors in a house belonging to a family she never sees. In the book's most vivid and engaging chapter, she's a pirate. She meets a group of people who work as human stand-ins for barnacles. She's the assistant to a hitman. She fills in for the missing mother of a little boy, staying with him until he's a grown man.
Leichter offers a dry send-up of the gig economy, framed in whimsical terms that give it the ambience of a child's bedtime story. It most reminded me of the similarly bizarre/funny stories in Jen George's . You can try and impose real-world logic on Temporary, but it only stretches so far; better just to enjoy where its surreal wanderings take you.
I received an advance review copy of Temporary from the publisher through .
Here, anything can be a temp role. As a girl, the narrator's first job is to open and close all the doors in a house belonging to a family she never sees. In the book's most vivid and engaging chapter, she's a pirate. She meets a group of people who work as human stand-ins for barnacles. She's the assistant to a hitman. She fills in for the missing mother of a little boy, staying with him until he's a grown man.
Leichter offers a dry send-up of the gig economy, framed in whimsical terms that give it the ambience of a child's bedtime story. It most reminded me of the similarly bizarre/funny stories in Jen George's . You can try and impose real-world logic on Temporary, but it only stretches so far; better just to enjoy where its surreal wanderings take you.
I received an advance review copy of Temporary from the publisher through .
January 27, 2022
as absurd as capitalism
December 12, 2020
I think Leichter is making an important point about the way that profession makes a up a disproportionate part of identity and stability, but it’s all so aggressively quirky, that I had a hard time taking it seriously.
December 22, 2020
This novel follows a temporary worker who fills increasingly bizarre jobs - from pirate to door opener to barnacle to murderer's assistant. It is absurd to the nth degree. Yet... I kept getting flashbacks to jobs I filled when I worked as a temp in my twenties to support myself as an actor. Like the protagonist, I put on various masks each day to fit into my newly assigned and frequently inane roles. I often felt like a character in a Samuel Beckett play.
So Temporary is not as ridiculous as it seems on the surface. It brings home, again and again, "the drudgery of tasks done and undone" and the hollowness of corporate culture.
So Temporary is not as ridiculous as it seems on the surface. It brings home, again and again, "the drudgery of tasks done and undone" and the hollowness of corporate culture.
December 1, 2019
One of the best books I've read in a long time. Reading this is like attending a party to celebrate and grieve how unemployable you are, there's enough sadness confetti for everyone.
January 14, 2023
I gave this a good 40 pages (almost 20%) before bailing, as I just didn't want to read another word of it...it defines the term 'twee' and just wasn't for me! (hey, I rhymed!)
December 26, 2020
Temporary....
“lasting for only a limited period of time: not permanent�.
There is humor, darkness, ignorance, absurdity, fantastical tales, whimsical wit, thought-provoking symbolism, and meaningless temp jobs.
An unnamed woman, the main character, takes a variety of temp job....
A LOT OF JOBS.... ‘variety� is the key word. A few seemed ordinary and dull enough, but most were bizarre.
Our protagonist has almost as many boyfriends as temp jobs�-
Ha.....just a little symbolic, yes?.... YES!
A fun sardonic afternoon read on a cloudy ‘stay-at-home� order December day.
Warning.....ha, ( tongue-in-Cheek realism)....hold on to your belongings when reading this book ...a little birdie, ghost, or even the Xmas scrooge might decide to steal a few of your precious things....
Pens, jewelry, or ?.....maybe even your favorite comfy boots.
“lasting for only a limited period of time: not permanent�.
There is humor, darkness, ignorance, absurdity, fantastical tales, whimsical wit, thought-provoking symbolism, and meaningless temp jobs.
An unnamed woman, the main character, takes a variety of temp job....
A LOT OF JOBS.... ‘variety� is the key word. A few seemed ordinary and dull enough, but most were bizarre.
Our protagonist has almost as many boyfriends as temp jobs�-
Ha.....just a little symbolic, yes?.... YES!
A fun sardonic afternoon read on a cloudy ‘stay-at-home� order December day.
Warning.....ha, ( tongue-in-Cheek realism)....hold on to your belongings when reading this book ...a little birdie, ghost, or even the Xmas scrooge might decide to steal a few of your precious things....
Pens, jewelry, or ?.....maybe even your favorite comfy boots.
August 3, 2022
She felt lucky to have coverage on her sick day, and that word, coverage, was a word she liked - the shirt that covered her shoulders, the blanket that covered her body, the sleep hat that covered her head, the roof that covered her hat, the sky that covered her roof, the universe that always covered her ass, so lucky was she.
▴▴�
darkly clever, sad, terrifying, and absurdly funny in a lovely lemony-snicketlike flavor!
our protagonist is a temporary employee with many gigs. these include: wearing ashes in a necklace and carrying a ghost with her everywhere she goes, being a pirate on a pirate ship, being a barnacle at sea, being murderer's assistant, being a ghost herself, being a mannequin, being a mother. there are bomb-dropping blimps and pamphlet-distributing dragons, and the earth is dying.
much of this is absurd, but none of the surreal fantasy elements make the story feel unreal. her insistence on completing her job to the fullest always, no matter how preposterous, is not unbelievable in our world.
everything is temporary, and everyone is replaceable.
also... capitalism, dude.
We went on dates to our favorite bar, and I was happy. I could be happy and sad. It's the way I can multitask, it's the way two feelings can be the same feeling. It's the way a rash and a willow can both weep.
February 18, 2021
3 Stars
What a bizarre little book.
I did enjoy this read although the absurdity, disjointed narrative and the protagonist's vagueness made me feel like a passive reader that was never truly grounded in this book.
Temporary as the title clearly indicates it is about a woman being a Temp, a temporary in the world. Always looking for the elusive permanency through increasingly bizarre placements our protagonist is an apprentice to a lizard-like witch, swabbing decks on pirate ships and shining shoes in an endless kleptomaniacs closet.
There is a lot of messages in this book about placing our identity in our profession, our need for comforting sameness and finding our place in the world but I struggled to get to those messages because the absurdity and quirkiness were front and centre. I think the writer put too much emphasis on the crazy which drowned out everything else. So like I said I enjoyed the book but I think it was little too crazy for this gal.
What a bizarre little book.
I did enjoy this read although the absurdity, disjointed narrative and the protagonist's vagueness made me feel like a passive reader that was never truly grounded in this book.
Temporary as the title clearly indicates it is about a woman being a Temp, a temporary in the world. Always looking for the elusive permanency through increasingly bizarre placements our protagonist is an apprentice to a lizard-like witch, swabbing decks on pirate ships and shining shoes in an endless kleptomaniacs closet.
There is a lot of messages in this book about placing our identity in our profession, our need for comforting sameness and finding our place in the world but I struggled to get to those messages because the absurdity and quirkiness were front and centre. I think the writer put too much emphasis on the crazy which drowned out everything else. So like I said I enjoyed the book but I think it was little too crazy for this gal.
January 26, 2021
I loved this book. Inventive, imaginative, surreal, eccentric, unique, and hilarious. This was such a pleasure to read.
Huge grin on my face.
Huge grin on my face.
April 29, 2021
I loved this book because it made me happy and it made me incredibly sad. Sad in the way that everything written was true. Every item, job, and moment had a real-world alternative meaning. From the cremated ashes our main character carries around her neck, to the series of temporary boyfriends who also use her as a place-filler in their lives, to the uncomfortable stolen boots she’s doing all her shit jobs in, everything has an interpretable meaning.
Nothing lasts. Also, you’d better get busy living your life and doing what you need to do! Then get busy doing what makes you happy or you’ll get busy dying, giving your life away, energy away, passion away, eventually being led astray or used up by those who don’t care and who will replace you the minute you’re unavailable.
Facts.
It’s funny because growing up my mom used to tell me that all the time. She’d say, “Chantel, don’t kill yourself for those people, because you think they’re going to kill themselves for you? Nope, they’d replace you the instant you’re gone.� She still says that, to this day.
This book kept highlighting to me, how much we think we’re important to others, but how much we really should invest in being important to ourselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are important to others, but so many times they don’t show you just how important you are until the last possible second because they’ve also spent so much time being self-absorbed into their own world and the nonsensical world around them. The worlds of work, mannequins, tech bros, and pirates.
This is the kind of book that got more profound and layered ideologically with every page turned, but it was still light-hearted even when it was heavy because of the distinct way that it was written. Hilary Leichter has got that absurdist-ish that I love down to a f/ing science! It picked me up at times and broke my heart at times. I loved that it had so much to say, but that it took its time and committed to being strategically allegorical.
It was weird in the perfect way that I like, shout-outs to a cool ass librarian and friend for the recommendation!!
Nothing lasts. Also, you’d better get busy living your life and doing what you need to do! Then get busy doing what makes you happy or you’ll get busy dying, giving your life away, energy away, passion away, eventually being led astray or used up by those who don’t care and who will replace you the minute you’re unavailable.
Facts.
It’s funny because growing up my mom used to tell me that all the time. She’d say, “Chantel, don’t kill yourself for those people, because you think they’re going to kill themselves for you? Nope, they’d replace you the instant you’re gone.� She still says that, to this day.
This book kept highlighting to me, how much we think we’re important to others, but how much we really should invest in being important to ourselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are important to others, but so many times they don’t show you just how important you are until the last possible second because they’ve also spent so much time being self-absorbed into their own world and the nonsensical world around them. The worlds of work, mannequins, tech bros, and pirates.
This is the kind of book that got more profound and layered ideologically with every page turned, but it was still light-hearted even when it was heavy because of the distinct way that it was written. Hilary Leichter has got that absurdist-ish that I love down to a f/ing science! It picked me up at times and broke my heart at times. I loved that it had so much to say, but that it took its time and committed to being strategically allegorical.
It was weird in the perfect way that I like, shout-outs to a cool ass librarian and friend for the recommendation!!
September 2, 2023
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Hilary Leitcher has written an original debut novel. It shifts and modulates between a creation story, an absurdist chronicle of twenty-three jobs, a meditation on loneliness and transience, a search for belonging and permanence, and an antediluvian story of chance & happenstance and the end of days.
The story starts en media res and quickly returns to move forward and around from the childhood of the unnamed protagonist’s life. At its core and most literal level, Temporary progresses to chronicle the story of her life through twenty-three temp work assignments. While the first assignment tells the story of her childhood, it also tells the tale of her abandonment, and the source of her psychological transience and struggle with commitment. While the first few assignments make a pretense of resembling temp assignments in real life, the assignments quickly and progressively lean into an absurdist and interconnected life story. The style is surrealist to the point of painting cartoonish scenarios, which is used to juxtapose and draw attention to the message, as is the fashion of say effective political cartoons.
In chronological order, she is sent to live in a stately house and fill in for a ghost, collects a coterie of eighteen boyfriends who become friends and turn her city apartment into a hangout, temps for a pirate ship assuming the identity of the women she is filling in for, becomes an understudy to a bank robber and murder, is assigned to a dirigible to press buttons on command which drop bombs on targets, gains employment for a witch to hand out fliers, and is enlisted by a boy to fill in for his departed mother to cook, clean, yell on occasion, and stare out the window longingly at the world out there.
Although becoming apparent in the second half of the book, the characters and events are deeply interconnected. In a fashion, it’s a reflection on how events and decisions from childhood and early adulthood have consequences later on. Not surprisingly, her abandonment as a child and transience from earlier in life, haunt the narrator in adulthood and undermine her ability to find steadiness and companionship, much less the chance to put down roots. All the while, the decisions and events happening in the early assignments, which seemed to occur more less by chance and happenstance, have at the same time released antediluvian crime, demons, and carnage on the residents of her world at large. To some degree, as her handler at the temp agency points out, these consequences would have been avoided had she seen through the assignments to completion. Of course, the argument is unfair, and this is the logic of this surrealist world that shines a twisted mirror back on our own.
While there might be too much going in and mixed up in the bricolage for it all to work, as a whole it coheres in a fashion and like an exotic dish at a restaurant leaves you somewhat stimulated for trying something original and different. The narrative framing at the beginning and end suggests a mythology and a role of the first and last temps as something like titans or nymphs in the world of gods and men. It serves to end on an upbeat end of days note rather than a somber falling out with the boy and the boyfriends. The framing seemed a bit unnecessary, but then again what truly is in a surrealist story?
The story starts en media res and quickly returns to move forward and around from the childhood of the unnamed protagonist’s life. At its core and most literal level, Temporary progresses to chronicle the story of her life through twenty-three temp work assignments. While the first assignment tells the story of her childhood, it also tells the tale of her abandonment, and the source of her psychological transience and struggle with commitment. While the first few assignments make a pretense of resembling temp assignments in real life, the assignments quickly and progressively lean into an absurdist and interconnected life story. The style is surrealist to the point of painting cartoonish scenarios, which is used to juxtapose and draw attention to the message, as is the fashion of say effective political cartoons.
In chronological order, she is sent to live in a stately house and fill in for a ghost, collects a coterie of eighteen boyfriends who become friends and turn her city apartment into a hangout, temps for a pirate ship assuming the identity of the women she is filling in for, becomes an understudy to a bank robber and murder, is assigned to a dirigible to press buttons on command which drop bombs on targets, gains employment for a witch to hand out fliers, and is enlisted by a boy to fill in for his departed mother to cook, clean, yell on occasion, and stare out the window longingly at the world out there.
Although becoming apparent in the second half of the book, the characters and events are deeply interconnected. In a fashion, it’s a reflection on how events and decisions from childhood and early adulthood have consequences later on. Not surprisingly, her abandonment as a child and transience from earlier in life, haunt the narrator in adulthood and undermine her ability to find steadiness and companionship, much less the chance to put down roots. All the while, the decisions and events happening in the early assignments, which seemed to occur more less by chance and happenstance, have at the same time released antediluvian crime, demons, and carnage on the residents of her world at large. To some degree, as her handler at the temp agency points out, these consequences would have been avoided had she seen through the assignments to completion. Of course, the argument is unfair, and this is the logic of this surrealist world that shines a twisted mirror back on our own.
While there might be too much going in and mixed up in the bricolage for it all to work, as a whole it coheres in a fashion and like an exotic dish at a restaurant leaves you somewhat stimulated for trying something original and different. The narrative framing at the beginning and end suggests a mythology and a role of the first and last temps as something like titans or nymphs in the world of gods and men. It serves to end on an upbeat end of days note rather than a somber falling out with the boy and the boyfriends. The framing seemed a bit unnecessary, but then again what truly is in a surrealist story?
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January 3, 2022So I did the 'recommend me 12 books' challenge that was going around social media, asking for 12 random recs on Twitter and this is the first. Not an auspicious start, unfortunately. The concept is terrific but it didn't feel like it was carried through to anywhere in particular: there was, for me, just less to it than met the eye. Also, yet another book for which the blurbwriter claims a degree of comic genius that completely bypasses me as a reader. Clearly I just don't have the same sense of humour as US publisher marketing departments. Let's never go to the pub.
March 18, 2020
This is easily my favorite read of the year so far. It isn’t for everyone, but it was perfect for me. It will be perfect for a lot of people.
If you have ever had a job in the corporate world, you will love this book. If you have ever had any job, you will love this book. If you have ever been asked to do things at work you don’t morally agree with, had your job threatened, been thrown under the bus by a colleague, had to work with oblivious idiots, wasn’t properly trained and then blamed when things went wrong, been fired for any reason, been fired for no reason, been a scapegoat for someone higher up the corporate ladder, had people you considered your friends completely ignore your existence when you became unemployed, had your career problems infect your personal life, felt almost zero sense of job security most of the time.... Hmmmm, maybe this book is perfect for everyone.
Written in absurdist style, follows an unnamed woman who moves from temp job to temp job trying to find permanence. She works as Chairman of the Board, a shoe shiner, a ghost, a pirate, a replacement mother, a pamphlet pusher, an assassin’s assistant, a department store mannequin, and all sort of other absurd and random things. By doing this, the author shows us how freakish and absurd capitalist society and our own lives are if we sit down and think about it. In each of these jobs she encounters something almost all of us have dealt with in our own careers. We need to work to survive, but can we overlook this one icky thing? What about this one really bad thing? Will we be at this job forever? Or are we all, in a way, temporary and replaceable no matter how many valuable things we contribute? How do we keep doing it when we have no permanence or “steadiness�? How could we not?
Five big stars from me. This will be a book people talk about for a long time. I am already telling everyone I know about it.
If you have ever had a job in the corporate world, you will love this book. If you have ever had any job, you will love this book. If you have ever been asked to do things at work you don’t morally agree with, had your job threatened, been thrown under the bus by a colleague, had to work with oblivious idiots, wasn’t properly trained and then blamed when things went wrong, been fired for any reason, been fired for no reason, been a scapegoat for someone higher up the corporate ladder, had people you considered your friends completely ignore your existence when you became unemployed, had your career problems infect your personal life, felt almost zero sense of job security most of the time.... Hmmmm, maybe this book is perfect for everyone.
Written in absurdist style, follows an unnamed woman who moves from temp job to temp job trying to find permanence. She works as Chairman of the Board, a shoe shiner, a ghost, a pirate, a replacement mother, a pamphlet pusher, an assassin’s assistant, a department store mannequin, and all sort of other absurd and random things. By doing this, the author shows us how freakish and absurd capitalist society and our own lives are if we sit down and think about it. In each of these jobs she encounters something almost all of us have dealt with in our own careers. We need to work to survive, but can we overlook this one icky thing? What about this one really bad thing? Will we be at this job forever? Or are we all, in a way, temporary and replaceable no matter how many valuable things we contribute? How do we keep doing it when we have no permanence or “steadiness�? How could we not?
Five big stars from me. This will be a book people talk about for a long time. I am already telling everyone I know about it.
June 12, 2021
Woah, what an experience! And possibly the most surreal, yet readable books I've to had the privilege of reading.
I can't possibly do the work justice with one of my non-reviews, instead I'll let the book speak for itself.....
I can't possibly do the work justice with one of my non-reviews, instead I'll let the book speak for itself.....
"Temporaries measure their pregnancies in hours, not weeks. We’re employed at an hourly rate, and we gestate in the same manner. My mother was pregnant with me for 6,450 hours, most of them billable hours spent at work, filing, tabulating, eating noodles at her desk, then lying on the couch with her feet propped up on a pillow, taking walks around the city with soothing music playing in her ears, sewing elastic into the waists of her pants, going to work, eating noodles, tabulating, sewing onesies, hiding the pregnancy under loose sweaters for fear of dismissal, filling in at work, filling out in the middle, eating noodles, tabulating, swollen feet propped up on a pillow, loose sweaters stretching, walks around the city, music, more noodles.
“Be careful, or you’ll end up unemployed,� my grandmother told her. My mother had never heard her say that word out loud before.
“Not in front of the baby!� my mother said, putting a hand on her belly."
July 1, 2020
I feel/felt utterly stupid reading this novel. It's classified as "humor" and I just couldn't find that.
I just don't get what this is about.
That being said, I suppose I should at least try to interpret what I read. Here goes, then, this seemed like looking at a reflection of the world as we know it, but not in a mirror, more like reflective foil. The book is interesting, light, but it's just not my cup of tea.
I just don't get what this is about.
That being said, I suppose I should at least try to interpret what I read. Here goes, then, this seemed like looking at a reflection of the world as we know it, but not in a mirror, more like reflective foil. The book is interesting, light, but it's just not my cup of tea.
April 15, 2020
Rarely does a much-hyped book exceed expectations, but this one left mine in the dust. Five pages in I thought, "This is going to bore me"; thirty pages in I thought, "This is going to entertain me"; another thirty and I thought, "This is going to crush the soul right out of my body." It does all three, always with a purpose, and on every page it made me laugh, and a couple nearly made me cry. One even scared me.
There's a strong temptation to draw comparisons with Barthelme or Diane Williams or some other point of reference that would give people an idea of what they're getting into, and I guess I just did, but this feels like a unique and uniquely enjoyable take on contemporary servitude that only someone who came of of age in a post-9/11, Great Recession, gig-economy world could write. Essential reading.
There's a strong temptation to draw comparisons with Barthelme or Diane Williams or some other point of reference that would give people an idea of what they're getting into, and I guess I just did, but this feels like a unique and uniquely enjoyable take on contemporary servitude that only someone who came of of age in a post-9/11, Great Recession, gig-economy world could write. Essential reading.
January 16, 2020
5+ out of 5.
Calvino-esque in its absurdity, but blended with the millennial workplace malaise that fueled . A temp does strange temp jobs, like working on a pirate ship and helping an assassin -- all while carrying a ghost around in her necklace. It's wild and silly and manages to be both sharply critical of our late-capitalist moment and deeply humane in its assessment of eternal human realities.
Gods I loved this. What a great, great read. Truly gasped at the ending, too.
Calvino-esque in its absurdity, but blended with the millennial workplace malaise that fueled . A temp does strange temp jobs, like working on a pirate ship and helping an assassin -- all while carrying a ghost around in her necklace. It's wild and silly and manages to be both sharply critical of our late-capitalist moment and deeply humane in its assessment of eternal human realities.
Gods I loved this. What a great, great read. Truly gasped at the ending, too.
January 26, 2020
The First Temporary was assigned to complete a variety of projects.
"Burn this bush," one god said, and so she did.
"Now put the bush back the way it was," another god said, and so she learned the drudgery of tasks done and undone, the brutal makings and unmakings of the earth.
"Create an animal so rare it barely exists," the gods said. The First Temp cobbled together something extraordinary, irreplaceable.
"Someone," she corrected them.
"Now watch it go extinct," they said, and so she held its wing and watched it glimmer, fade, disappear.
"Burn this bush," one god said, and so she did.
"Now put the bush back the way it was," another god said, and so she learned the drudgery of tasks done and undone, the brutal makings and unmakings of the earth.
"Create an animal so rare it barely exists," the gods said. The First Temp cobbled together something extraordinary, irreplaceable.
"Someone," she corrected them.
"Now watch it go extinct," they said, and so she held its wing and watched it glimmer, fade, disappear.
February 18, 2020
Smart, hilarious, truly no other book like this and no other writer like Leichter
July 12, 2021
OK, so the protagonist can't hold a job, but a whole agency sending temps out as accomplices for serial killers, burglars, and such was a bit much for this reader. The writing is snide, off-the-cuff contemporary with plenty of Gen Z references, but I liked neither the writing nor the ideas here. The protagonist is not that funny and the situations go from ludicrous to just dumb and my suspension of disbelief failed me on multiple occasions. Not at all my kind of book: but I will hazard to guess that those who like will like and vice-versa.
October 24, 2019
This book is just delicious! It is a cartwheel in book form, a mint julep with Pop Rocks, a squeegee gem of neon proportions! It’s about a temp worker who bounces between a variety of surreal jobs, encountering all kinds of strange obstacles and friends and lovers along the way, and it will resonate with anyone who has ever felt precarious in a job. (So -- probably everybody?) It's kooky and sad and fun, balancing bubbly humor with important issues of labor and permanence. It's also a great exploration of the very topical issue of interchangeability. If we define ourselves by our jobs, then are we interchangeable with anyone who can perform the same tasks? How easily can we replace someone else, and should we? What makes us unique? Leichter does a wonderful job tackling these big questions about being human in an engaging, moving, delightfully weird book.
July 28, 2023
Me gustó y a la vez no.
La forma en la que está escrito hace que por momentos sea entretenido y muy representativo con respecto a la sociedad y sus diferentes facetas, perspectivas, pero no fue un libro con el que conectara mucho.
La forma en la que está escrito hace que por momentos sea entretenido y muy representativo con respecto a la sociedad y sus diferentes facetas, perspectivas, pero no fue un libro con el que conectara mucho.
December 19, 2019
If, after you wake up from the American Dream, you make yourself some tea and then fall back asleep, this novel is the next dream you might have. Leichter's debut is funny, profound, unforgettable.
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