SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
On any given day, the Stranger might play a mourner, a celebrant, a boyfriend, a drunk, a friend, a best man at a wedding or a father to a young girl, all for a fee and for a rating on an app called Rental Stranger, a five-star rating, he hopes. "Five-Star Stranger" is the debut novel from Kat Tang, a former lawyer who's written for The New Yorker, Pigeon Pages and other publications. She joins us now from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
KAT TANG: Hi. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What do clients want from the Stranger?
TANG: I think that the clients want a variety of things from the Stranger. They want to be less lonely. They maybe want to show off to their friends that they have, you know, an attractive wedding date or something like that. But oftentimes, I think these clients - they think they know what they want, and when they get exactly what they want, they're somewhat disappointed, or they want more.
SIMON: Funerals and weddings are a staple, but also more complicated situations, aren't there?
TANG: Yes. So one of the...
SIMON: Wait. Did I say more complicated? Well, keep that. But I'm wrong. Nothing's more complicated than the funeral or wedding. Go ahead, though.
TANG: I think that one of the main storylines - the heart of the novel - is about a young girl who has had the Stranger as her father, but she doesn't realize that he's not actually her real dad. And so it's, you know, she's turning 10 years old, and she's realizing now as she's getting older that there's something odd going on in that relationship between her mother and her father, and she doesn't quite know what that is.
SIMON: Yeah. The mother is Mari. Her daughter is Lily. What put this as a story in your mind?
TANG: Yeah. So I had first heard of rental families as a phenomenon in Japan, and something about that stuck with me through the years. When I began working on this novel, it was really that idea of, what is it like to rent someone for an hour, two hours? And then, you know, who is that person that you are renting who can play any role immediately? You know, how observant must they be? What kind of life do they live that they can pretend to be other people? And so I started thinking about a man who wants to make other people happy but is deeply unhappy himself.
SIMON: It's hard to play the role of a father and not think of yourself as a father, isn't it?
TANG: You know, that's really interesting because I actually went to Japan recently in April, and I rented a father.
SIMON: Could you tell us about that? Was this just for research or...
TANG: Yeah. So this was actually after the book had already been written, but I just wanted to see what it was like, whether or not I had really captured that experience. And, you know, it's strange to look at these relationships that we take for granted, relationships that take years or a lifetime to really form, such as being a father or being, you know, a brother, something like that. And, like, what does it feel like to pretend at that for an hour or two hours? And so when I was in Japan, I rented this father for two hours. And it made me rethink my own relationship with my real father because I ended up asking this rental dad things that I've never asked my real dad. And so we have this blueprint, this idea of what a relationship is like, and we don't actually follow that in our real lives, but we can follow it with a stranger.
SIMON: Questions you were reluctant to ask your father? May I ask?
TANG: Yeah. You know, when you're with someone day in and day out, you kind of take them for granted. I don't know. I didn't think to ask my dad these types of questions, but, you know, I asked this guy who I hadn't met before, do you have any life advice for me? I asked him about relationship advice, things that don't really come up in your day-to-day when you see someone all the time.
SIMON: How did he handle it?
TANG: I think he's been asked these questions before by other clients. So he had his little spiel. He told me that, you know, when I'm trying to decide between whether to do something or not do something, I should just go ahead and do it. I won't regret that. And then for relationship advice, he said that men and women are very different and that I should keep that in mind or something along those lines.
SIMON: Yeah. Forgive me, did you give him a five-star rating?
TANG: I did not give him a five-star rating yet because there's no rating system on the website, but he did do a great job, and I wholly recommend him.
SIMON: Without giving too much away, there's a moment when Mari tells the Stranger - and it's a thunderbolt of a perception - she understands he's good for her daughter but not for her.
TANG: Yes. I think Mari is a very interesting character because she's someone who understands sacrifice. She understands as a parent what is best needed for her child, but that oftentimes isn't necessarily what's best for her. And I think that's what the Stranger actually really admires about Mari because he had a fraught relationship with his own mother. And so seeing a mother who's so willing to sacrifice for her child - I think that really gets to him.
SIMON: Does the Stranger forget it's a role?
TANG: I think the Stranger prides himself in always keeping one foot in the realm of remembering that it's a role. But as we see him kind of go through the novel, get closer to some of his clients, he might slip up here and there, even though he would never admit that himself.
SIMON: Why do you never give the Stranger a name?
TANG: I had considered giving the Stranger a name. In my mind, the Stranger does have a name. But I think that the reason why it's never revealed is because he is, in some senses, a stranger to himself during most of the novel. And so we don't, as readers, get to know who he is because he is not sure who he is, either. I think there's something sort of distancing about that. And also, in a way, the reader can then project onto him what they think of him as. And he gets all these names during the novel, just not the one that he was, you know, born with.
SIMON: I want to thank you for this interview. How many stars would you give me?
TANG: I think I would give you all the stars.
SIMON: (Laughter).
TANG: Are there 10 stars? Can I give more?
SIMON: Well, please hold on while we connect you for a short survey.
TANG: All right. Sounds good (laughter).
SIMON: Kat Tang - her novel "Five-Star Stranger." Thank you so much for being with us.
TANG: Thank you, Scott. Don't be a stranger. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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