The Guest
Aoife’s Review:
The Guest by Emma Cline takes us from the big city to the 'burbs where our wholly unlikeable lead is wreaking havoc, biding her time until Labour Day when she plans to reel her unwitting client back in. I cannot help being drawn to what Kirkus Review describes as Cline's 'alluring ickiness' and look forward to delving into the chaos this summer
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.
