I give him props for being so ambitious with a first novel, but I struggled with the elevator thing and constantly had to remind myself that it was allegorical of larger and more meaningful tropes. The conceit wore on me and just seemed cute by the end, which I think he recognized with the whole "it started as a joke and then became real to him once it seemed real to others" revelation in the third act. I was in the grocery store a few hours ago and had the thought in the produce section that the book could just as easily have been about the first black "produce arranger," and it would not have lost any of its (unrealized) potential for providing insight into modernity through the prism of race. I also had a hard time seeing Lila Mae as anything other than a cipher for the larger message he wanted to transmit, rather than a feeling character with believable motivations. But it's a far better first novel than I could have ever managed!