3.5
The Guest
By Emma ClinePublisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 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
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Chicago Public Library
“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
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Chicago Public Library
“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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities219 Reviews
3.5
El Tuttle
Created 4 months agoShare
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“There is not much of a plot, but what Cline accomplishes is communicating second hand anxiety for a character I don’t even want to be rooting for.”Easy to readFast-pacedRealistic setting
Ruth Madievsky
Created 4 months agoShare
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“tore through this one. it’s going to be living rent free in my head for some time”Believable charactersMulti-layered charactersBeautifully writtenEasy to readFunny writingOriginal writingAddictiveSuspensefulBeautiful settingRealistic setting
Esther
Created 4 months agoShare
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“Completely unhinged in the best way. Maybe because I’m reading it both in the area it’s set in and it’s the end of August, but I felt right there with the plot and characters. The desperation and delusion of Alex is simultaneously ridiculous and real. Definitely entertaining and well paced. I also liked that the character and background development were left intentionally superficial as perhaps it’s a reflection on the world Alex kept wanting to belong in and be accepted. 4.5/5”Descriptive writingEasy to readFast-pacedUnpredictableBeautiful settingImmersive setting
🦋Camilla
Created 4 months agoShare
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“A phrase that sums this up: No plot, bad vibes.
While I typically enjoy books without a distinctive plot, this one didn’t do it for me. I felt too disconnected from Alex and couldn’t bring myself to care enough for her recklessness for the majority of the book. (All I could do was stress and cringe while reading through gritted teeth.) To me, she wasn’t fleshed out well enough as a character for this to be a successful character focused story. But the final chapter was definitely entertaining!!”Reviewed in:women vs. the void (18+)
Descriptive writingEasy to readRealistic settingUnengaging characters
Emily Chesser
Created 4 months agoShare
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“Alex is so delusional, but I really enjoyed her unique narration and the journey it took us on. I was eager to see what her next move would be. Alex seems to be a kind of mirrorball character, who reflects back what a current setting or person wants from her as a form of self-preservation. Overall, I really enjoyed this!”Reviewed in:women vs. the void (18+)
Multi-layered charactersUnpredictableImmersive settingThought-provoking
About Emma Cline
Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. She received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O. Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
Other books by Emma Cline
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