Emma Cline is a writer who seemed to hit her stride straight out of the gate. Her bestselling 2016 debut The Girls, which told the story of a Manson family-type cult, was praised for its canny structure, moving seamlessly between time frames, and for the sheer density of imagery, although what was most striking about the novel was how assured it was.
In person, Cline is more hesitant. We are in Brooklyn today, in the flat of a friend she is staying with while visiting from LA. The 34-year-old is Californian by birth and upbringing, and it is tempting to read in her a sort of wispy Didion-esque aura one associates with that part of the world. She appears watchful, her voice tremulous with good humour, and she is a leaver of pauses, some more agonised than others, while seeking out the right meaning. Writing her new novel The Guest was, she says, partly a reaction against The Girls – a deliberate flexing of other muscles – and partly a way of “giving myself the challenge of can I write a novel-length work that has some of the tension I like in a short story”.
