An exciting and “inventive” (HuffPost) debut novel about a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or companion of any kind—who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.

Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? The father to your child?

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 as he navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients.

But, when an eccentric 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.

“A sharp page-turner about our culture’s commodification of everything” (Debutiful), Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about isolation in a hyperconnected world, and “what it means to love and be loved” (Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans).

Reading Group Guide

Reading Group Guide

FIVE-STAR STRANGER

Kat Tang

This reading group guide for Five-Star Stranger includes an introduction and discussion questions. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

The unnamed narrator of Five-Star Stranger finds his career as a top-rated Rental Stranger suddenly at risk when an eccentric client pushes him to break character. She threatens to expose his long-term role as father to a young girl as a paid gig if he doesn’t come clean to her, which forces him to confront the surprising depth of his feelings for his pretend family. The unexpected discoveries he makes will change the course of his life.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. The narrator keeps three rules for himself as a Rental Stranger: “(1) form no emotional attachments, (2) participate in no illegal activities, and (3) allow for no touching beyond a hug or holding hands” (page 17). What do you think of these self-imposed guidelines?

2. Analyze Stranger’s routine as he describes it at the beginning of Chapter 3. Discuss how he structures his time. If you were a Rental Stranger, how would you prepare for your meetings with clients?

3. Lily is described as an incredibly intelligent child. At the beginning of the novel, Stranger remarks on how she’s become even more inquisitive lately. Do you see seeds of suspicion in her line of questioning?

4. Darlene hires Stranger to act out scenarios with him for writing inspiration, and she pushes him to break character. Discuss their relationship and how it develops over the course of the novel.

5. At what point do you think Stranger developed genuine feelings for Lily and her mother, Mari? Why do you think that is?

6. Talk about the nightmare Stranger has at the end of Chapter 11. What do you think brought on this nightmare? What does it foreshadow?

7. We learn about the Rental Stranger profession primarily through the narrator’s perspective and in the few scenes where he talks with another rental. Do you think most Rental Strangers think like the narrator, or do you think he has a specific philosophy about the work?

9. As the novel progresses, we learn how complicated Stranger’s relationship was with his own mother, culminating with Chapter 13. How does your perspective of him as a character develop as you acquire this knowledge?

10. Discuss the argument between Stranger and Mari when he explains the predicament with Darlene. Mari cruelly describes him as a “parasite” (page 193). What do you think about her criticisms? How does her assessment align with your opinion of Stranger?

11. Early in the novel, Stranger admits that he is afraid of the dark. However, at the end of the novel, he describes willingly “pitching the room to blackness” (page 227). What does this change signify?

12. The pursuit of happiness is a central theme of the novel. Talk about the variety of opinions the characters express on the subject. How do you think Stranger’s relationship to happiness develops over the course of the novel?

About The Author

Photograph by Colleen O'Connell Smyth

Kat Tang

Kat Tang is a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program where she taught as an Undergraduate Writing Fellow. Born in China, relocated to Japan, and raised in California, she is fascinated by how we make and fake human connection in a technologically evolving world. Her short stories and graphic narratives have appeared in Electric Literature, The Margins, Pigeon Pages, and elsewhere. She currently lives in New York.

Product Details

Publisher: Scribner (August 6, 2024)
Length: 240 pages
ISBN13: 9781668050149

Raves and Reviews

"Tang excels in humanizing her concept, grounding it in the reality of our modern loneliness epidemic. It’s concise, impactful and the definition of a page-turner." —KQED

"This sharply observed, slyly witty novel asks provocative questions—about buried trauma, the gig economy, and the commodification of messy, unprofitable emotions." —Oprah Daily

"A smart book…With its cool premise, great descriptions and amazing attention to emotion and relationships, Five-Star Stranger is a strong debut, and Tang is an author to keep an eye on.” —Associated Press

“Heartfelt... raising questions on boundaries and commodification.” —People Magazine

“Moving…Tang uses clean prose to bring complex characters to life. An emotional character study that doesn’t rely on easy answers to complicated questions of identity, isolation, and familial love.” —Library Journal

"A sharp page-turner about our culture’s commodification of everything... equally a breezy and thought-provoking read.” —Debutiful

“Tang’s debut shines, marrying hurt and heart in a character readers will root for and connect with…In smooth and affecting prose, Tang draws a sharp portrait.” —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

“Provocative, self-assured…Tang plays deftly with the conventions of romantic comedy... A smart look at people-pleasing taken to its illogical extreme.” —Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

“Kat Tang’s inventive debut novel perfectly captures what it feels like to be lonely and searching for human connection in our modern life of parasocial relationships and contractual experiences.” —HuffPost

"Moving and offbeat... a memorable character study of a man hiding from himself.” —Publishers Weekly

"Five-Star Stranger is a five-star read. Kat Tang writes with care and clarity, perception and perfect comedic timing about what it means to love and be loved in our absurdist era of technology-induced isolation. I closed the book with an audible 'ahh' of satisfaction — not only entertained, but enchanted, and moved." —Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin

"A hilarious and touching meditation on our atomized age. It's rare for a book so profound to give so much pleasure, page by page." —Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

"A sly, sophisticated, and compulsively readable debut about a person who is paid to be invisible, to be anyone to everyone, and yet inadvertently finds himself. Five-Star Stranger is a satirical comedy that grapples with the modern-day anxieties of the online persona and gig economy, masterfully blended with a poignant, heartwarming story about human connection." —Weike Wang, author of Chemistry

"Five-Star Stranger carries its comic premise to surprising and intriguing places. This is a wise, funny and affecting novel, and a memorable debut." —Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

"Five-Star Stranger is smart and slick, a lampoon of the late-stage capitalist tech-ification of modern society, at turns realist and speculative, intimate and engrossing. A novel about a for-hire stranger who cycles through a carousel of identities for paying clients with myriad intentions, it asks an important question: who are you—truly, deeply inside—and if nobody cares to know it, does it even matter?" —Jinwoo Chong, author of Flux

"In a grindingly deterministic world where everyone’s faking it, Kat Tang has seen through the lies. She’s asking the hard, important questions. Is there anything left to bind us to each other? Is it possible to transcend our useful but dehumanizing illusions? Her answers are clear eyed and profoundly humane. Five-Star Stranger is the moral tale we need in these troubled times. It’s perfectly calibrated to blow your mind." —Joshua Furst, author of Revolutionaries

"A fresh and moving portrait of loneliness in a society where a swipe of a finger can buy you a friend, a best man, and even a father. How long can we purchase companionship before our sense of self shatters? Kat Tang adeptly and acutely explores how these perfect, five-star transactions can deepen the gaps in our lives, until we are unrecognizable to ourselves. A disassembling, propulsive, and absorbing read." —Crystal Hana Kim, author of The Stone Home

"Five-Star Stranger is a genuine original. As her protagonist shifts shapes and charms clients, you'll fall for each and every performance he gives. Father one moment, friend the next, and ex-boyfriend after that, he plays each role with aplomb, and Tang draws us in on the hunt to discover what truly lies at the heart of the best unknown supporting actor in New York City. Fast-paced, beautiful, and dazzlingly funny, this novel is a brilliant achievement." —Kristopher Jansma, author of Our Narrow Hiding Places