Kat Tang's sleek debut novel, Five-Star Stranger, takes aim at the dehumanization of gig workers through a superb story about genuine connections. Here, an unnamed narrator works for Rental Stranger, an app through which anyone can hire him to play a role--proposing boyfriend, college professor, wing man. Only a few self-imposed rules guide the narrator: he won't do anything illegal, and he won't do anything more intimate than hug. Yet his long-term role as father to Lily, a whip-smart nine-year-old unafraid to ask hard questions, might break his most important rule: don't get attached. Through the narrator's floundering attempts to avoid attachments, Tang shrewdly explores how relationships flourish.
Tang's narrator sees Lily every Thursday. His scripted job as a truck driver keeps him on the road, away from his family. In reality, he lives alone, works diligently to maintain his five-star rating by perfectly pretending to be someone he's not, and goes to bed having communicated with no one except clients. Once a week, he dotes over his fake daughter, encouraging her fleeting hobbies, nurturing her fastidious drive to learn, and delicately maintaining the charade. Mari, Lily's mother, hasn't told Lily that she pays the narrator to play the role of her father. Having a seemingly intact family unit is important to Mari, especially when she's otherwise overburdened by keeping her boss happy so as not to lose the little income her position pays. Lily, however, starts noticing discrepancies, and the narrator must work harder to evade her questions, must be perfect.
The narrator's compulsive perfectionism--down to a scheduled morning bowel movement ("fouling up someone else's bathroom destroyed the illusion of a perfect husband, boyfriend, in-law, what have you")--mirrors his deceased mother's fastidiousness. He practices "a subtle wink and mischievous smile" a hundred times in preparation to meet one client. Similarly, his mother was an aspiring actress so obsessed with her craft that the image he remembers of her isn't her actual face but her headshot. Her workaholism spilled into emotional unavailability: "If I comfort you when you're upset, you'll just be upset more often to seek comfort," she once explained, and so the narrator learned to hide negative emotions. Even in death, she holds sway over him. He wants to atone for spewing "hateful vitriol" at her and for bringing home "the stench of sex" as a teenager when his mother thought the act vile. As a Rental Stranger, he wants to "rebalance the cosmic scales by making happy in equal measure to where [he] made hurt."
Guaranteeing happiness, however, comes at a cost--one Tang dexterously shows her narrator acknowledging without having him mine its depth. His phone's photo reel contains zero pictures; his contact list is empty. His studio, which no one ever visits, primarily serves as storage for his job's required wardrobe pieces; takeout menus paper the windows ("efficiently ensuring my privacy and also expediting the process of choosing what to eat") and his kitchenette has two burners he uses only for boiling water. The narrator even treats himself as a purchasable good, evaluating his reflection "as one would a product" and wondering if "it" needs a shave rather than "do I" need to shave. At one point, so unfamiliar with himself, he looks up to smile at someone only to realize it's his own face in a mirror.
Tang thus presents a man so committed to connecting with no one--not even himself--that his clear affection for Lily soars with emotional power. Tang zeroes in on the care that comes with authentic love. The narrator, after noticing Lily's unraveling clothes, watches half a dozen videos on fixing loose threads. He buys her a new winter coat so her wrists won't be exposed to chafing winds. When a boy teases Lily about her nose, the narrator jumps to console her: "I say your nose is perfect, and do you believe some boy in your class or do you believe your dad?" Often, Mari arrives home past the narrator's paid end time, yet he won't replace her with a better-paying client. Accepting Mari's overtime pay doesn't sit right with him either; that money would be better spent, he thinks, on replacing Lily's worn-out skirts.
Amid the wit and humor of the first-person voice is a brilliant condemnation of commodity culture and a shrewd pronouncement that being lonely while surrounded by others is all too common. "Most people didn't realize [what] they truly wanted when they hired me--a nonjudgmental emotion receptacle: part therapist, part priest, part garbage bin," the narrator shares, suggesting that his clients' openness is rarely witnessed by their real contacts. Tang also cleverly weaves in society's ignorance and stereotypes surrounding Asian American individuals. The narrator never directly states his identity (his mother has a Chinese surname; his biological father was white) and he accepts Japanese, Korean, and even simply "Asian" roles freely. He is told by multiple people that he's " 'actually good looking,' the 'actually' undercutting the compliment as though it were an achievement for someone of [his] genetic makeup to be attractive." Tang blends together comedy and tragedy to portray an undeniably sincere man on a fool's errand to live life alone, creating a resonant and heartfelt tale about what's behind--and the necessity for--positive, meaningful relationships. --Samantha Zaboski