This spare, elegantly written novel is both a thriller and a brilliant feminist commentary on the lives of sex workers. Alex is a twenty-two year old woman who has found herself in the Hamptons with no money and no prospects. It’s fascinating that neither the Hamptons or the words sex worker are ever actually used in this book.
The author does a masterful job at building a growing sense of dread over Alex’s predicament. A bad character named Dom is chasing Alex for what appears to be a large sum of money she owes him, yet we never get to see more of him than texts or brief phone calls.
Emma Cline chose to take a huge risk here by not giving Alex a backstory. We don’t know exactly why she ended up in “the city” (New York but never mentioned!) as a sex worker and then stranded in the Hamptons at summer’s end. It doesn’t matter. I was riveted.
Class divisions are sharply skewered here – the Hamptons staff are almost invisible yet ever-present and the wealthy are truly in another world of their own. Children are cared for by nannies and spend no time with their parents.
As an aside, I applaud Ms. Cline for gaining some agency over her own life and writing by not shaming her young main character for her sex work. In real life, the devious Boies Schiller law firm (Harvey Weinstein’s defenders) had viciously tried to make public Ms. Cline’s sexual history in a misogynistic lawsuit filed by her ex-partner. Ms. Cline triumphed as she should have.
Alex might be a grifter but I sympathized with her. The ending was absolutely explosive. Highly recommend this suspenseful, broody and dark novel.
(𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘙𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘎𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯.)
About the Book:
A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
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 rarified 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.
