Emma Cline’s smash hit first novel, The Girls, was the biggest-selling hardback debut novel of 2016 and attracted fans as diverse as Lena Dunham and Richard Ford. A collection of short stories entitled Daddy came next but there hasn’t been another novel until now. The Guest is tighter in focus than The Girls – the latter had a double time-frame and beautifully delineated the experience of girls at the fringes of a Manson-like cult. The Guest is about one woman, 22-year-old Alex, who is staying with an older man, Simon, on the East Coast.
Cline is a peerlessly confident writer and avoids any obvious exposition so we don’t know exactly how Alex ended up at Simon’s house or why she wants to be there but we can guess. We do know that her roommates kicked her out of her apartment for stealing and not paying her rent. There are various hotels and restaurants she is not welcome at and she owes money to a man disturbingly named Dom – whose incensed messages flicker on her rarely functioning mobile phone.
