Hilary Leichter

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.

Temporary

From the author of the acclaimed novel Temporary, an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love, an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world. Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it's looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death? Based on the National Magazine Award-winning story, Hilary Leichter's profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.

Terrace Story

Die Hauptsache

From the author of the acclaimed novel Temporary, an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love, an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn’t there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller’s dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world. Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it’s looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death? Based on the National Magazine Award–winning story, Hilary Leichter’s profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.

A Novel

¿Cuántos empleos has encadenado en los últimos años? ¿Has llegado a tener algo parecido a un trabajo serio? Para la protagonista de esta novela disparatada, cada trabajo que consigue es más inestable que el anterior. Y también más absurdo: desde fregar la cubierta de un barco pirata hasta llevar consigo las cenizas de su jefe, pasando por ordenar un armario interminable de zapatos o ayudar a un asesino a sueldo. Atrapada en las redes de la gig economy -la sucesión constante de trabajos temporales y precarios-, esta joven sueña con lograr alguna clase de permanencia laboral en un presente en el que no es posible pensar a largo plazo, mientras distribuye su tiempo libre entre sus dieciocho novios y un fantasma que no se separa de ella. Parábola de un mundo en crisis, desorientado y al borde del agotamiento, Algo temporal es un prodigio de la narrativa humorística en clave social, o, quizá, una novela social de la que se extrae que la única manera de pensar nuestro tiempo es reduciéndolo al absurdo.En su debut como novelista, Hilary Leichter ha inventado una nueva forma de ver y analizar -con ingenio, humor y buenas dosis de nihilismo- el mundo contemporáneo y la fase avanzada del capitalismo en el siglo XXI. Al final todos podemos identificarnos con esta insólita heroína de la nada, pues por mucha resistencia que opongamos, seguimos sometidos a las dinámicas de una sociedad que nos reduce a simples seres de paso, a eslabones prescindibles de una desmesurada cadena de producción.

Hilary Leichter

About

Books

Join the club