Published in the run-up to summer, Emma Cline’s second novel is probably what people mean when they talk about a “beach read”. Whereas her 2016 debut, The Girls, arrived on a tsunami of hype and hazy lyricism, The Guest is the more controlled work of a fine talent maturing on its own terms. Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, it’s a gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality.
The story even begins on a beach. The ocean is amniotically warm, the sheen of sunscreen and the colour of bikinis filling the mise-en-scène as we meet our amorphous protagonist. An escort and a sugar baby, at 22 Alex is already in steep decline. Locked into a lifestyle of reciprocal benefit and exploitation, she’s in a relationship with a rich, “professionally healthy” man in his 50s named Simon. Like some AI dating-bot of the imminent future, Alex hoovers up data and adapts herself to her lover’s idea of who he’d like her to be: “All Alex’s unsavoury history excised until it started to seem, even to her, like none of it had ever happened.” As Simon grows suspicious, we infer that Alex has left in her wake a string of angry and disabused men. One of them, the ominously named Dom, has been texting and calling relentlessly since she ripped him off and disappeared.
