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.
I really enjoyed Emma Cline’s debut novel, The Girls, when I read it some five or so years ago. While The Guest has quite a different premise, I was intrigued by the blurb and eager to pick up a copy. It focusses on Alex, a woman in her early twenties who survives by attaching herself to wealthy older men, hoping to become a permanent fixture in their lives. Spending the summer with her current beau, Simon, on Long Island, she is dismissed after being caught in a somewhat compromising position (although not irredeemably so) with another gentlemen, and is dismissed to New York with a train ticket and whatever she can squeeze into a bag. Convinced that he just needs time to cool off, Alex decides to stay on Long Island until Simon’s Labor Day party five days later, convincing herself that they will reconcile at that event.
The opening scene of the novel immediately marks Alex as an outsider as the locals are happy to leave their belongings near to but not on the beach, safe in the knowledge that no one will take anything, while Alex’s first thought is how easy it would be to do so. Her desire to become a part of this community is palpable, and yet there’s a sense that, whatever the outcome of the Simon debacle, she will always be on the outside looking in. She is not accustomed to the wealth that this community takes for granted, and doesn’t think or act like those she’s hoping to join. She trades in a very different currency, and I thought that she’d never be more than a hanger on or a plus one, however much she believes otherwise.
And while she is on the outside looking in, she feels entirely comfortable in helping herself to whatever little items she wants and / or needs. Some of these items have resale value, which makes me think that she always has an eye on a future scenario where she might need to support herself, even temporarily, and is always preparing for that eventuality. That said, some of the items she takes seem to be driven by a compulsion rather than because of their worth. It’s landed her in trouble as we see a previous boyfriend attempt to track her down throughout the novel, and yet even that experience isn’t enough to change her behaviour. There’s something obsessive in her actions, be it the casual theft in which she indulges, but also her reliance upon alcohol and painkillers. One doesn’t have to look too hard to see what she’s trying to numb.
While I didn’t like Alex per se, I did like that she is entirely comfortable in her own skin and completely unapologetic for her behaviour and actions. She admits that nothing happened to make her as she is, and that it’s a lifestyle choice made consciously. She is, in her own words, beautiful, but not beautiful enough to be a model. She feels no shame or regret in using her looks and sexual favours to get what she wants, not caring that she’s little more than an ornament to those she attaches herself to. She understands but doesn’t care that she is expected to look good, make small talk when needed, and to please others on demand. She sees this as a small price to pay for the luxury and lifestyle in which she’s kept, however impermanent it’s proved to be so far.
The prose has a glorious dreamlike quality throughout – fragmented and disjointed which matches the protagonist and her haphazard style beautifully, and which is evocative of the languid summer days she experiences. As the five days between her dismissal and the Labor Day party pass, we see Alex, ever the opportunist, leave a trail of destruction in her wake as she repeatedly looks to swap her current scenario for something better. She has an innate sense for what people need and uses this to her advantage – from the young girl she befriends and then cruelly dismisses to the men who tend to want only one thing, she is happy to use those she comes across, before moving on as soon as a better opportunity presents itself, not caring or even noticing how she impacts those whose lives she has interacted with.
The Guest is something of an unusual novel which I enjoyed but didn’t love as much as I’d hoped. It’s strangely compelling to follow Alex as she strays from one disaster to another, always optimistic – naively so at times – that things will work out for the best. The ending is ambiguous and left to the reader to interpret. I know what I think, but others may take a different view. Recommended for those looking for an unusual, slow-paced, character-driven novel.
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