Five-Star Stranger

June 3, 2024
Tang’s moving and offbeat debut revolves around a New York City gig worker who offers his services on an app called Rental Stranger. The 20-something narrator, known only as Stranger, takes on such roles as mourner at a funeral, best man at a wedding, and wingman for a pickup artist. Each time out, he strives to make his clients happy enough to give him a five-star review, and his peculiar backstory explains his diligence. After his mother’s death 10 years earlier, he found purpose by visiting his nine-year-old neighbor, Lily, once a week and pretending to be her father (the real father doesn’t know Lily exists). Stranger, who is still pretending to be Lily’s dad, divulges this secret to a woman who hires him to help develop her novel in progress by playing one of the characters and peppers him with questions about his work. Tang makes hay with themes of love, attachment, and the desire to be seen, as when the narrator reflects on playing hide and seek as a boy: “The thrill of being undetected was paltry compared to the relief of being found.” The result is a memorable character study of a man hiding from himself. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Tang's debut shines, marrying hurt and heart in a character readers will root for and connect with. The five-star stranger of the title is our unnamed narrator. He makes his living on an app called Rental Stranger, where app users ask him to masquerade as important people in their lives. He's been fake fianc�s, guests at weddings and funerals, and wingmen at parties. Our narrator has even begun a pseudo-relationship with a woman who asks him to act like a character in her novel. But his longest gig has been with Mari and her daughter Lily. He has been playing Lily's dad since she was a baby, and the arrangement has persisted for years. But now Lily is a preteen and beginning to question why her father only visits on Thursdays. Our narrator has been a stranger for so long. What will happen when he becomes someone they know? In smooth and affecting prose, Tang draws a sharp portrait of the narrator, who has always measured his success by his reviews on the app. When he realizes he can be a different person--his own--this leads to profound change. Suggest to readers of Milena Michiko Flasar's Mr Katō Plays Family, translated by Caroline Froh (2023).

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Starred review from July 15, 2024
An unhappy young man tries to redeem himself, and make a living along the way, by fulfilling the fantasies of strangers. The unnamed narrator of Tang's provocative, self-assured debut has been working for a decade as a "Rental Stranger," performing as boyfriend, wingman, brother-in-law from out of town, despondent mourner at a funeral, or whatever other role his clients need in order to impress their friends and relatives, as long as it doesn't involve any emotional attachment or carnal activity. Haunted by the death of his depressed actress mother when he was a teenager, he does his best to lose himself in his work. His longest-standing role is as father to Lily, who is now 9. Because her mother, Mari, wanted a stable male figure in Lily's life, the Stranger has been picking her up from day care and then school once a week since she was 2, in the guise of a long-distance trucker father. More recently, he has begun playing the role of an alcoholic brother to creative writing student Darlene, who wants to make her writing more realistic. As Lily grows more suspicious of what her "father" is doing when he's not around, Mari's life takes a new direction, and the relationship between the narrator and Darlene tests the narrator's boundaries, he begins to wonder if it's time for a change of career. Peeks into how the narrator handles his many assignments, which include a public proposal to a woman trying to make her lover jealous, add humor to what could otherwise be a melancholy tale. Tang plays deftly with the conventions of romantic comedy, tempting the reader to long for the promise of happy endings and then throwing cold water on those hopes and embedding sharp ethical dilemmas in a cocoon of diverting dialogue. A smart look at people-pleasing taken to its illogical extreme.

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July 1, 2024

A gig worker known only as Stranger is the top-rated man for hire on the Rental Stranger app in Tang's debut. He also has a long-term job, as father to a young girl. What happens when fake and temporary relationships cross lines? Tang wonders in this story of isolation, hyperconnectivity, commodification, and authenticity. Prepub Alert.

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