"A brisk, wildly imaginative first novel…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
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for a Debut Novel
Finalist for Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
NPR Best Books of 2020
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2020
Refinery29 Best Indie Books of 2020
Vulture Best Books of 2020
ELLE Best Books of 2020
ALA Notable Book
Finalist for NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
Finalist for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in Comic Fiction
“[A] delirious and deeply humane satire. . . . Temporary has the manic, goofing energy of a lounge act.” —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"[A] refreshingly whimsical debut that explores the agonies of millennial life under late capitalism with the kind of surrealist humor that will offer anxious minds a reprieve from our calamitous news cycle. . . . As a book about the brutality of the work world, Temporary is a great success. Leichter has managed to blend the oddball and the existential into a tale of millennial woe that's both dreadful and hilarious at once. This book should be recommended reading for workers--and essential reading for nonessential workers--everywhere." —Rebekah Frumkin, The Washington Post
"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. . . . In the trippy, shape-shifting architecture of Temporary, we come to discover that the landscape around us is constructed on shaky foundations, but also that there's comfort in uncanny in-betweenness."
—Leslie Pariseau, Los Angeles Times
"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
"Chances are you've never read a workplace novel like Hilary Leichter's. The author takes numbing routines to dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) extremes, delivering subversive entertainment in the process." —Entertainment Weekly
"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
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