The Guest

The Guest ~ Emma Cline

Alex is a 22 year old professional sex worker from New York who seems to have found herself an actual boyfriend, 50 something year old Simon. They are spending the month of August in his beautiful home in the Hamptons, where he works by day and has parties with business acquaintances many evenings, and Alex occupies her time swimming and going to the beach. At a party one evening, Alex fails to conform to Simon’s standards, flirting with another guest rather than stick by his side, and he asks her to leave, to go back to her apartment in New York. But she no longer has a place in New York, her roommates got tired of her not paying the rent and have kicked her out. She’s been hoping to make this thing with Simon permanent, living with him and taking pain pills and so on. So she has nowhere to go. She knows he is having a big party the following weekend, for Labor Day, so really, she just needs to get through a week to let him cool off, then she figures she can win him over again.

Thus begins a week in which Alex connives and takes advantage of whomever she comes across, grifting her way into homes and parties, trying to stay housed and fed and safe. Most of the people she comes across are extremely trusting, especially of a young, attractive blonde who dresses well (Simon bought her the clothes), so they are easy enough to dupe. But her tendencies always come along and blow it for her, just as they did with Simon. She steals small items, she takes drugs from medicine cabinets, she sleeps with boyfriends, she takes advantage of innocents younger than herself. She’s a guest from hell, though she doesn’t actually mean any harm. She just wants to get through the week and get back to Simon.

I liked this book, I thought it was well written and as fun as such a thing could be. Alex is an anti-hero, but at some level I was rooting for her. I mean, I didn’t want her to use all of these people, but Simon is kind of a shit, so he deserves a shitty girlfriend with a pill addiction and lax morals. I wanted her to be safe from the shady character of Dom, who keeps calling and from whom she stole an unspecified but large amount of money and drugs. Recommend if any of that sound interesting to you.

Maya has read this book, and she hates the ending. I liked the ending. If you’ve read the book, let’s discuss (with spoilers!) in the comments. If you’ve not read it and don’t want any spoilers, be careful in the comments. Maybe put a Spoiler Alert or something in your comment.