Genre Fiction
![Emma Cline - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B015QE6TGS.jpg)
The Guest: A Novel
A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this "spellbinding" (Vogue), "smoldering" (The Washington Post) novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
"Under Cline's command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force."-The New York Times
"Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another."
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 rarefied 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.
"Under Cline's command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force."-The New York Times
"Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another."
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 rarefied 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.
Editorial Reviews
"Cline generates an impressive amount of intrigue . . . The descriptions are frequently bracing and acute, sharpened to icepicks by a stance of amoral neutrality."-Wall Street Journal
"A wonderfully suspenseful examination of luxury, delusion, class and fear."-Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Enthralling . . . Who needs living when you've got The Guest in your bag?"-Jezebel
"Emma Cline serves glitz and unease."-Vanity Fair
"In her first novel since 2016's runaway hit The Girls Emma Cline returns with another story of sex and manipulation . . . The same things that make Alex a sketchy person also make her an infectious protagonist: She's a schemer, a liar, a seducer, and a thief . . . But ‘hot mess' doesn't quite do justice to her entrancing resourcefulness even as the walls are closing in . . . Alex is amazing."-Philadelphia Inquirer
"A smoldering thriller that explores desire and deception.'"-The Washington Post
"With her propulsive third book, Cline confirms her reputation as the literary prophet of women on the brink . . . Dreamlike and disaffected, this charged study of class and gender lingers like a bad sunburn."-Esquire, "Best Books of Spring" & "Best Books of 2023 So Far"
"[Cline has] skill with language . . . [and] shimmering insights into complexities of womanhood and desire."-Los Angeles Review of Books
"Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, [The Guest] [is a] gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality."-The Guardian
"A grifter tale for the post Anna Delvey era, a spellbinding literary rendering told from the perspective of the deceiver herself . . . Cline is a master of depicting the nefarious and atmospheric menace that often lurks ad...
"A wonderfully suspenseful examination of luxury, delusion, class and fear."-Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Enthralling . . . Who needs living when you've got The Guest in your bag?"-Jezebel
"Emma Cline serves glitz and unease."-Vanity Fair
"In her first novel since 2016's runaway hit The Girls Emma Cline returns with another story of sex and manipulation . . . The same things that make Alex a sketchy person also make her an infectious protagonist: She's a schemer, a liar, a seducer, and a thief . . . But ‘hot mess' doesn't quite do justice to her entrancing resourcefulness even as the walls are closing in . . . Alex is amazing."-Philadelphia Inquirer
"A smoldering thriller that explores desire and deception.'"-The Washington Post
"With her propulsive third book, Cline confirms her reputation as the literary prophet of women on the brink . . . Dreamlike and disaffected, this charged study of class and gender lingers like a bad sunburn."-Esquire, "Best Books of Spring" & "Best Books of 2023 So Far"
"[Cline has] skill with language . . . [and] shimmering insights into complexities of womanhood and desire."-Los Angeles Review of Books
"Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, [The Guest] [is a] gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality."-The Guardian
"A grifter tale for the post Anna Delvey era, a spellbinding literary rendering told from the perspective of the deceiver herself . . . Cline is a master of depicting the nefarious and atmospheric menace that often lurks ad...
Readers Top Reviews
kathleen g
Would things have been different if Alex had fessed up to crunching Simon's bumper? Possibly not given what else happens that day but now 22 year old Alex, who has been living with the much older Simon in the Hamptons for the summer, is out on her own with all of her possessions. Which isn't much. She's a grifter, a young woman who came from somewhere never specified to New York City and worked her way through men, taking money and drugs from them as she went until she met Simon. Oh and one of those men- Dom- is coming after her. Now, though, she's homeless and penniless and walking around and hanging on for Labor Day when she plans to infiltrate Simon's part- pretending to be a family friend, someone you knew, and so on to feed herself and sleep. She's completely unappealing in some ways and yet Cline makes you hope she'll survive. She's street smart, she loves to swim, and she's (oddly) good with kids if not good to herself. This has all the atmospheres of the Hamptons. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I found myself totally caught up in Alex and turning the pages.
Elaine Carter
A solid novel featuring a protagonist you will be thinking about for a very long time. The only downside is the somewhat ambiguous, less that satisfying ending.
