Emma Cline's "The Guest" is a very unsettling journey around the unsavoury edges of the rich and entitled Long Island (NY) summer crowd. We are in the company of Alex - a 23 year-old woman using her looks and sex to stay afloat.
Alex is currently attached to a middle-aged businessman she’s met in a New York bar. He treats her like a “pet”: installs her in his summer pad on Long Island; buys her clothes and trinkets; trots her round to endless parties as eye candy. But when she misbehaves she is sent packing. It is at this point that the story shifts up a gear and gets much edgier.
Armed only with her unreliable phone, and scoring pills where she can, Alex cadges rides and favours from whichever likely male - young or old - should haplessly cross her path. Alex is also an old hand at dealing with this sad passing parade of characters. Emma Cline’s skill is in revealing Alex’s self delusions and the insecurities and neuroses of all in her path.
There is apparently a new name for these creepy, anxiety-driven novels. They are called: “anxious girl books”. The protagonists work to project an image of cool as they verge ever nearer to a breakdown. It is this intense tension that keeps the reader hooked.
Emma Cline’s second novel, The Guest, is a gripping and thought-provoking read. A must for anyone who enjoys dark, psychological fiction. No wonder her publisher, Random House, gave her an advance of two million dollars to write this book. She deserves every penny.