Editorial Content for Five-Star Stranger
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Reviewer (text)
FIVE-STAR STRANGER, a provocative novel centered on the gig economy, follows the exploits of New York’s top performer on the Rental Stranger app, where users can hire a fake fiancé, a wingman or an extra mourner for a funeral. Known only as Stranger, the narrator likes to maintain a professional distance from his clients and, it becomes apparent, from his own demons.
"Kat Tang has created an interesting premise for her debut novel that doesn’t quite deliver. However, given her impressive writing skills, that very well may change in future efforts."
As Stranger morphs seamlessly from one character to another, changing wigs, clothes and personalities based on his clients’ needs, he has little time for a personal life, which suits him just fine. But a long-term (and far-fetched) gig as an itinerant father to a perceptive nine-year-old compels him to rethink his priorities, especially his fear of attachment.
The reason for that aloofness becomes painfully clear over the second half of the book, where Kat Tang maneuvers her protagonist and his clients into position for an unlikely denouement involving an exposé that one renter threatens. Though this doesn’t happen in quite the way Stranger fears, it forces him to come to terms with the tradeoffs he has made to keep control over his carefully choreographed world.
While Tang explores Stranger’s loneliness, guilt and unresolved anger towards (who else?) his mother, she isn’t able to adequately demonstrate --- rather than merely explicate --- why he behaves the way he does. And, curiously, some of the other themes that might have been explored in a book about renting pretend friends, parents and children --- the emphasis on appearances, the belief that friends and family can be bought or rented on an hourly basis --- never get developed.
Kat Tang has created an interesting premise for her debut novel that doesn’t quite deliver. However, given her impressive writing skills, that very well may change in future efforts.
Teaser
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, FIVE-STAR STRANGER follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app --- a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.
Promo
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, FIVE-STAR STRANGER follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app --- a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.
About the Book
In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger” --- a companion hired under various guises --- walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways.
Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, FIVE-STAR STRANGER follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app --- a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients.
But when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.
FIVE-STAR STRANGER is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.
Audiobook available, read by Julian Cihi
