The Guest
A gripping psychological thriller and unputdownable summer read
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3.2 • 26 Ratings
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
*A FINANCIAL TIMES Best Book of 2023 * A NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year 2023 * A TIMES 'Book of 2023' * 'Addictive' STYLIST Books to Look Out For 2023 * 'Destined to be the status read of 2023' HARPER'S BAZAAR BEST NEW FICTION *
Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome...
One 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, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake.
Taut, sensual and impossible to look away from, The Guest captures the latent heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge.
PRAISE FOR EMMA CLINE
'Taut, beautiful and savage' GUARDIAN
'Stunning . . . thrilling . . . a spectacular achievement' THE TIMES
'Something about Cline's intimate tone, her talent for conjuring the feeling of being alive, is entirely and uniquely her own' RACHEL KUSHNER
'An astonishingly gifted stylist' BRANDON TAYLOR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 22-year-old woman loses her apartment and her grip on reality in the provocative latest from Cline (The Girls). After Alex's sex work dries up, she gets kicked out of her place in New York City and takes up the offer from Simon, an affluent older man, to spend the summer in the Hamptons. All goes well until a week before Simon's Labor Day party, when Alex dings his car, and Simon suggests she head back to the city. Hoping to preserve what luster she can in Simon's eyes, she doesn't mention she has nowhere to go and convinces herself she'll be welcome at his party. She then launches a series of schemes to get through the next five days, taking advantage of strangers' assumptions that she belongs. As Alex wanders from a rental full of hard partiers to a pool house on property left vacant for renovations, she draws on her sex work skills to keep herself welcome and leaves a trail of destruction. Before the first couple days are out, she's slept with another girl's boyfriend and damaged a blue-chip painting, while holding out hope, however misguided, that Simon will be happy to see her again. Cline has a keen eye for class differences and makes Alex into an intriguing protagonist who has learned to be observant, but must also recognize she's losing her judgment if she wants to survive. Like watching a car crash, this is hard to look away from.
