The Guest

A Novel

By: Emma Cline

Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this “spellbinding” (Vogue), “smoldering” (The Washington Post) novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

“Under Cline’s command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force.”—The New York Times

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • VULTURE’S INAUGURAL "BEACH BOOK READS" BOOK CLUB PICK • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Glamour, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Slate, Time Out, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit, Bookreporter

“Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another.”

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.

©2023 Emma Cline (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Cline’s writing at its very best—hypnotically propulsive, viscerally disquieting, and moving in the most unpredictable ways.”—Financial Times

“Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, [The Guest] [is a] gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality.”—The Guardian

“Cline confirms her reputation as the literary prophet of women on the brink.”—Esquire

Writers’ strike spoiled the ending

The most positive feature of this audiobook is the reader, who voiced the characters very well, and made the narrative more compelling than I expect it was in the traditional book format. Early on, the characters were defined, and behaved predictably, rather than ongoing character development, Just when the story was on a gliding path to its ending, wouldn’t you know it, there was a writers’ strike, and Emma Cline did not cross the picket line. So, I guess we will need to read Season 2 to find out what happened.

Should have been titled BELABORED TALE OF AN UNINTERESTING SOCIOPATH

WTAF? How on earth did this get on the New Yorker’s Best of 2023 list?

very slow and unresolved ending

I don’t even want to hear “the ending was allying to…” or anything about symbolism or whatever. It’s sucked. The story was a long ramble with no resolution. Next.

A train wreck

Total disappointment. I equate this story to watching a train wreck. Challenge is once you start you want to hear how it ends. Not worth the read.

Not worth it

Wow. This went nowhere. Truly just a painful listen/read. I thought we were building to something - but nope.

What happened???

I was very disappointed with the ending. Overall, I didn’t feel the book had much substance or went anywhere with the story. Characters did grow or learn anything. I listened until the end because I thought for sure it would have tied up what was presented as character flaws, but no!

What is wrong with this narrator

I see a lot of praise for the narrator here, but doesn't it bother anyone else that she can't pronounce "Alex," the name of the main character? Aleex? Aleese? Alext? I mean, come on.

Depressing

I just kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever did. I kept thinking it would get better. It didn’t.

Flat ending

The story invoked emotion but lead aimlessly down a path with no destination. Like the main character I guess.

Easy Read

I wish the ending had more closure.. I wondered what happened with Simon and Alex