Name: Temporary
ISBN: 9781566895668

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

Digging into the footholds of late stage capitalism, Hilary Leichter playfully attempts such a clever work about the making and unmaking of capitalism. The narrator begins in an agency that allots her existence, kneading resumes into a series of paychecks that constitute a life. Here, people like her are called 

, meaning they are filling in for somebody – a ghost, a pirate, a barnacle – no matter how absurd it is. That's a key theme here, 

lodged between who she is and whom she is meant to replace. But it seems that she herself has a lack of self, or perhaps through her journey, started developing coagulated selves, compromising themselves for one another, and the only permanence is her changing, temporary selves. None of these roles are hers, but are always carved out of someone else's body, somebody else's mannerisms, lives, hearts. Later on you will see that she always finds herself careening towards this system's nodules, as many of us do, leading us to the 'questioning.' An exaggerated examination of our current systems, taking it a few steps further because this is all absurd and this surely isn't the way to live! Let the soft animal of our body love what it loves. Please!!!

"She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends and desired that kind of permanence all the same." 

There are many more things I wish to say but it is for the readers to discover themselves!

As all books I love, the way Hilary weaves her words is a gift. Her writing is layered, fissured; the way I wish I could write about all these reflections of mine. I believe she's a poet. I have many favorite passages, one of them was when she found herself in literal darkness:

"In the perfect darkness I feel calm [...] I feel the floating joy of a world without walls, without bodies, without days, without a single worldly thing. I feel my face and I don't know how it's positioned in relation to the sun. This lack of perspective somehow makes me hopeful. I'm a seed unsprouted [...] I shake off the animal I've become and roll my spine..."

Alyanna

Digging into the footholds of late stage capitalism, Hilary Leichter playfully attempts such a clever work about the making and unmaking of capitalism. The narrator begins in an agency that allots her existence, kneading resumes into a series of paychecks that constitute a life. Here, people like her are called temps, or temporary, meaning they are filling in for somebody – a ghost, a pirate, a barnacle – no matter how absurd it is. That's a key theme here, filling in, always lodged between who she is and whom she is meant to replace. But it seems that she herself has a lack of self, or perhaps through her journey, started developing coagulated selves, compromising themselves for one another, and the only permanence is her changing, temporary selves. None of these roles are hers, but are always carved out of someone else's body, somebody else's mannerisms, lives, hearts. Later on you will see that she always finds herself careening towards this system's nodules, as many of us do, leading us to the 'questioning.' An exaggerated examination of our current systems, taking it a few steps further because this is all absurd and this surely isn't the way to live! Let the soft animal of our body love what it loves. Please!!!

"She noted the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends and desired that kind of permanence all the same." There are many more things I wish to say but it is for the readers to discover themselves!

As all books I love, the way Hilary weaves her words is a gift. Her writing is layered, fissured; the way I wish I could write about all these reflections of mine. I believe she's a poet. I have many favorite passages, one of them was when she found herself in literal darkness:

"In the perfect darkness I feel calm [...] I feel the floating joy of a world without walls, without bodies, without days, without a single worldly thing. I feel my face and I don't know how it's positioned in relation to the sun. This lack of perspective somehow makes me hopeful. I'm a seed unsprouted [...] I shake off the animal I've become and roll my spine..."

if i liked it less, i would be able to talk about it more. unfortunately for my review, i loved it a lot and hugged it gently before putting on a shelf, hence i could not do it justice with my scribbles. temporary is a world of its own, a critique of late capitalism presented in such a genuine, phantasmagoric way, where the fear of replaceability makes you destroy yourself and people around you for nothing just to be replaced in half a heartbeat. to imagine temporary, imagine a feeling of homelessness with home being something more than a concrete box, a feeling of sticking out like an exposed bone in open fracture when meeting your old friends with stable lives and unrecognizable faces, a feeling of having a lump in your throat preventing you from sharing your rawness, a feeling of not belonging to any workplace since every single one is nothing more than a temporary dot, and the real you is the space stretched between who you think you are and the person you are currently replacing. what is the highest price you are capable of paying to gain a permanent place to stay? at the end, there is nothing more permanent than temporariness

''how long does it take to accurately replace a person, i wonder? certainly longer than a life. an eye patch doesn't relate the eye, it just provides temporary coverage."

lily lily 

if i liked it less, i would be able to talk about it more. unfortunately for my review, i loved it a lot and hugged it gently before putting on a shelf, hence i could not do it justice with my scribbles. temporary is a world of its own, a critique of late capitalism presented in such a genuine, phantasmagoric way, where the fear of replaceability makes you destroy yourself and people around you for nothing just to be replaced in half a heartbeat. to imagine temporary, imagine a feeling of homelessness with home being something more than a concrete box, a feeling of sticking out like an exposed bone in open fracture when meeting your old friends with stable lives and unrecognizable faces, a feeling of having a lump in your throat preventing you from sharing your rawness, a feeling of not belonging to any workplace since every single one is nothing more than a temporary dot, and the real you is the space stretched between who you think you are and the person you are currently replacing. what is the highest price you are capable of paying to gain a permanent place to stay? at the end, there is nothing more permanent than temporariness

''how long does it take to accurately replace a person, i wonder? certainly longer than a life. an eye patch doesn't relate the eye, it just provides temporary coverage."

'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.

Lindy

An odd, fabulist, little book dealing with the commodification of social roles. If you liked Ling Ma's Severance, read this.

reann

Second time reading this book and it still remains one of my favorites! “the fallacy of permanence in a world where everything ends” ? There is something so unsettling (pun intended) yet comforting around the thought of being just a temporary.

mic shulman

maybe not actually a 5 star book but 5 star Feelings it ignited in me

for such an absurd book, the sentiments it expressed are so legible and familiar to me (as essentially an office worker in my 20s) probably because capitalism is a death machine that comes for us all <3

Shona Tiger

The author had so much fun with language, and concept! 4/5 for the weirdness that kept me reading, although it slowed down significantly at the end.

雪 xue

temporary playfully nods at the absurdity of late stage capitalism in the most whimsical, airy way possible while never losing me as a reader. this ingenious book is tumbling with creativity and wonder!! it is brilliant, unpredictable, emotional, fun, and truly in a class by itself. a very, very special book if read all the way through <3

Temporary

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