I received an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book from Netgalley and Random House. This has not impacted my rating and this review is voluntary.
- Genre: Fiction
- Published by: Random House
- Publish date: May 16, 2023
- Number of pages: pages
- Author’s website: https://www.emmacline.com/
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A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.
A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she’s been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.
With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.
Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.
Rating: 2/5
What in the drug-induced fever dream?
I really had higher hopes for this one because I loved The Girls. This book was wild and not in a good way. We follow Alex as she fakes her way into the late-summer WASPy life of a sugar baby. While you have to admire her tenacity, it’s almost surreal how much she gets away with. At the same time, it’s a testament to how much we are willing to try to get away with when we are desperate. To me Alex is desperate to escape the danger of her past, to not be homeless(?!?!), and to find the guy to save her.
With the same atmospheric bewilderment that you find in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Emma Cline, creates a narrative that you can’t look away from. Even though Alex is in a situation of her own making, you have to acknowledge that sometimes various decisions can lead to a person in too deep and needing to escape by any means necessary. Although this main character irritated me to no end, you end up rooting for her. We are left with a vague ending so I hope she is well!
Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? I’d love to know!
Musings by Michelle 