Book Review: What's it like to be a rental stranger? Kat Tang's debut novel imagines an answer

As our lives become more automated, increasingly niche jobs materialize to fill in the gaps. Ours is a society in which people hire celebrities to make birthday videos, or pay “job leaving agents” in hopes of a more frictionless quitting experience. What would it be like to be that stranger for hire, to inhabit whatever role someone paid you by the hour to be?

Kat Tang’s debut novel, “Five-Star Stranger,” follows one man over a months-long spiral as he realizes he's getting attached to his clients — a violation of his first rule for himself as a rental stranger — forcing him to confront his past and examine why he got into the business in the first place.

Tang never reveals the Stranger’s real name — one of the many ways he becomes a blank slate onto which others can project what they want. He's a self-described attractive man, whose Japanese American heritage means he can code-switch easily between white and Asian depending on his clients' needs. His apartment is full of wigs and outfits for different personalities and occasions, and he can use makeup to age himself up or down.

If this isn't giving you identity crisis vibes yet, he also takes accents, mannerisms and stories from clients that he can later whip out for another gig. His evening client just wants to hear stories for an hour — so he regurgitates the stories his afternoon client told him nonstop, even adopting the original teller's voice.