Synopsis
When I was fourteen, a cousin of mine angered a Malignant One. It was a big case, a genuine scandal. Maybe you remember it. At the time, when it ended, I just wanted to forget about the whole thing. But a couple of years have passed and I guess maybe it's time to think about it again.
Thus begins Ellen Pierson's story of how she helped her cousin Paul contend with the Malignant One running a temp agency in the office building where he worked.
Ellen's story is a bright and moving tale set in the same fabulous, fantastic America as that of Rachel Pollack's award-winning Unquenchable Fire. Funny and frantic, poignant and powerful, Temporary Agency is an enduring fable from a writer whose work, in the words of Orson Scott Card, "like a river in flood, resists the well-channeled ways, cutting its own channel through the fictional terrain."
Reviews
Pollack's latest presumes knowledge of its prequel, Unquenchable Fire, in which entities known as Bright Beings, Malignant Ones and Benign Ones actively participate in human affairs. In any case, this is a first-rate work, comprised of two related novellas. The title entry introduces narrator Ellen Pierson, whose cousin Paul Cabot unwittingly becomes involved with a Malignant One named Lisa Black Dust 7 (who runs a temp agency). Paul's travails lead the adolescent Ellen and her family to enlist the aid of lawyer Alison Birkett, who attempts to restore peace to Paul's life. Ellen and Alison uncover Grand Conspiracies, and Ellen discovers what people will do in the name of pragmatism. In the next story, "Benign Adjustments," Alison and Ellen, who's now an adult, are paired again, to protect Alexander Timmerman, who, aided by three Benign Ones, espouses peace, love and reform of the financial system. The latter preachment leads to trouble, including a scene on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange graphic enough for the most avid action-adventure fan, but the heart of the novella examines how the most benign intentions can be adulterated by human frailties. Pollack is primarily concerned with the character and basic emotional underpinnings of the people in her future society-and, by extension-in our own. The two novellas combine into a consistently rational framework while never forgetting that the key to good fiction is people and what happens to them.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ellen Pierson's worst fears are realized when her cousin Paul's true love, the operator of a temp agency down the hall, turns out to be one of the Malignant Ones, a host of supernatural beings who torment humans in this post-revolutionary world (the Benign Ones aid humans). Ellen and her family fight back with all the tools at their disposal: amulets, sanctified chalk, and Formulas of Recognition. They turn to the government for help, but the Spiritual Development Agency is no help at all. Finally, they contact Alison Birkett, a kind of spiritual Ralph Nader and Bob Woodward rolled into one. The conspiracy she uncovers reveals the depths of governmental complicity with the Malignant Ones. Even the publicity provided by an appearance on Nightline, however, is not enough to save Paul from himself and the Malignant Ones. Ten years later, when contacted by Alison on another matter, Ellen is still resentful about the unhappy outcome of her cousin's case. Her natural curiosity and her attraction to Alison, however, overcome her misgivings, and Ellen is once again on the hunt, armed with feathers, salt, and her own considerable intellectual talents. Brilliantly original, funny, and fascinating. Pollack (Unquenchable Fire, 1992, etc.) turns the world on its spiritual head, offering an alternative view of the matters in which the government, however spiritualized, is still not to be trusted. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Against the backdrop of a New Age America where shamanic magic and spirit visitors are real, a young woman attracts the unwelcome attention of the Malignant One, whose plans for the ultimate liberation of humanity can only result in destruction. Set in the world of Unquenchable Fire (LJ 4/15/92), Pollack's latest novel features a determined heroine whose faith in her own convictions becomes her most formidable weapon. Though moral con-servatives may be offended, the author's brilliant extrapolation of a spiritually awakened society bears witness to her potent literary imagination. Most libraries should own this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Set in the world of Pollack's Unquenchable Fire (1992) at some imminent but unspecified time, Temporary Agency is a commentary on current global politics and governance that combines magical realism, science fiction, and surrealism in a gripping drama of conspiracy at the highest levels of power. The two-part story of intrigue, double-crosses, and political deal making focuses on Ellen Pierson, just 14 when her beloved cousin, Paul, crosses paths with a Malignant One. Ellen has an adolescent crush on Alison Birkett, a superattorney specializing in demonic possession, and is overjoyed when Birkett herself takes on the case of "freeing and liberating" Paul from the erotic, will-destroying Black Dust 7, whose evil forces threaten Ellen and her family. Part two finds Ellen grown into an attractive, independent lesbian in her late 20s, confronting new and terrible manifestations of excessive power gone excessively corrupt as her path once again crosses Birkett's, this time as more than a client. A powerful, disturbing look at a future mirroring the more frightening aspects of today's political realities. Whitney Scott
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