The Guest, a review (by Emma Cline)

Book: The Guest, 2023

Author: Emma Cline

Rating: 8/10 ☆s

If there is anything you should know about me, I love an unlikable female character. Especially one that, until the very end, you can root for. I think we root for them because they remind us of all the moments in our life we never tell anyone else. That time I ran a red while Doordashing, the faint scent of weed in my curtains. I break the rules sometimes too, I think, as I read alongside an incredibly selfish person. A girl who, against all odds, lives as though the world exists for her. Alex. Somehow it’s the perfect name. She is a monster but also the princess, and you want her to win. You want her to reach the finish-line flamboyantly, with joy.

Perhaps this is much easier given the accuracy to which the male characters are written. They are immature, insecure, and petty. All of them. They are all slightly disgusting. They never rise to the occasion and they never intended to. That’s what we all both love and hate about them.

Simon is like a father. He wants to take care of you, but he wants something from you. Your needs feel incessant towards him, not unlike from a mother or aunt. He only acknowledges you when you embarrass his self image. His ego is a cloud. He takes care of everything, I guess. He is both sexual and nonsexual.

Dom is the ghost, a horrible mistake when you didn’t believe you deserved better. He never really appears, but the idea of him has your nervous system on high alert for the entirety of the story. He is everything bad a man has every done to you, waiting. Wanting to reoffend. He is the possibility that it might happen again.

Jack is the boy. He is already showing signs of what a horrible, controlling man he will one day become. No, he’s already become that. In just a few short days. You only feel so bad because he looks young and capable of change. Mostly likely, he isn’t.

Lori, Nicholas, Karen, the server at the club, the nanny, and Max, as all the fellow “lower-class” people in the club, served as contrast for Alex. Lori’s messy car and antisocial partner, while she was organized and communicative for Simon constantly. Nicholas goes without saying; he spent every second in the pursuit of perfection. The server and Alex, aligned in value, inside his shitty car. The nanny trusting her but not trusting her. Everyone had everything on the line. Max, an outsider who grasped towards Alex when given the chance. They all saw her as part of them, a fraction of their experience, and leaned towards her for comfort or pushed her away out of fear.

Dana, who brought her into this world but was already aware of her sudden expiration. She was the clarity that Alex, someway or another, had royally fucked up. Even the random heavy numbers in her phone, people who insisted that any contact with her was a “bad idea.”

But this isn’t about any of them. It’s about the way Alex, in spite of this all, this weeklong insight into the horrors of sacrificing oneself for the higher class, she never gives up. Even until the very end.

My biggest fear in writing the review is the end. And in some Alex kind-of-way, I want to skip it. I want to tell you what I think of everything instead. But I have to take it one step at a time, just like the perfect timing of this novel. Each movement Alex makes is both spontaneous and nonsensical. She embodies the modern woman: hard to follow. You know exactly why she does what she does, while you wish you knew why she did what she did. It’s so perfect it’s hot. It makes you feel just as arrogant.

In a way, the reader might wish they were as carefree as Alex. This is exactly what Cline wants you to feel, for a moment perhaps, even if fleeting. That maybe, sure, it could be fun to be nothing at all. Cline is bringing us into the void lifestyle; the person who is so desperate to be something they accidentally lay themselves to be feasted upon, a meal that expires whenever the host desires.

Throughout this book, Alex meets so many people in her same position. Performers, as she calls them. There is Lori, Simon’s assistant. Alex even feels it is necessary to prove herself to Lori, the person beneath Simon. Nicholas, George’s assistant, who she desperately tries to exchange her services with. His class and rejection, interlinked, sting her. The many well-dressed butlers of each event. Karen, Margaret’s “not maid.” She sees Alex in a raw, unfiltered way that she usually saves for her victims. The server at the club, referring to Alex as only 223. The number that fulfilled, without question, each selfish whim that carried from her. I think she went to that parking lot to ground herself in the disgusting reality of her life. To feel normal, I think.

Alex meets a lot of men in this book who she advances sexually without question. I fear that many people might see this as weak, or some formula of a modern day dilemma. I see it differently. Alex is a performance. I wouldn’t be surprised if, back home, she went by some other name. She is working the full time job of being someone else. Afterall, how much time in the day can you be yourself in a survival world? You have things to tend to: you must fight, feed, fuck, and above all, you must cope. And for some reason, to cope is shameful.

I know many people will be disappointed in the ending. They won’t get it, I think. But as someone who has dealt with the unfortunate experience of addiction, both within those I love and my very own soul, I think there is more here than meets the eye. Of course Alex is going to do this again. That’s the whole thing, you know? The whole book. She will never give up. Because while what she has isn’t great, it’s always going to be brighter than what she was inherently given. Which, in some type of crushing defeat, makes her almost exactly like the people she morphs into through-out the novel, and somehow- at the same time- she is nothing like them at all.

What does it mean to be anything at all?

This book was written to be a movie. You can see each scene in such chilling detail. I think it would be a perfect addition to the A24 catalog of uncanny realistic horror-adjacent satire. Or whatever they call it.

Anyways, here’s my fancast.

ALEX (played by Ella Purnell)