Having gobbled up that suspenseful psychological study, I’ve been anticipating Cline’s next move. While I have thus far bypassed her collection of short stories titled Daddy, her second novel is now out and is called The Guest. Cline, born in 1989 in California, returns to her familiar themes of adolescence, identity, and the darker aspects of human nature.
In The Guest, 22-year-old Alex has left New York City for the summer because she owes her ex-boyfriend Dom a lot of money. She begins living with an older, wealthy man named Simon on Long Island and all is going swimmingly (literally, she spends most days lazing at the beach or pool) until she commits a social error at a dinner party and Simon sends her packing back to the city.
Alex skips getting on the train and begins bouncing around from home to home in the rich beach community, first with a young group of partiers who she tricks into thinking they know her, then with a young and unhappy girl named Margaret who badly wants to be Alex’s friend, and finally into the arms of a boy named Jack whom she manipulates (or is it vice versa). All this happens while she tries to avoid Dom’s increasingly threatening messages and as she anticipates that Simon will take her back at his Labor Day party happening in several days.
Alex is a highly memorable character and the novel never leaves her side. That said, we don’t necessarily know much more about her outside of the week or so that the novel takes place. I had a lot of questions unanswered, which clearly must have been Cline’s intention … to leave Alex as a mystery. Her character is absolutely worthy of further study. The Guest could actually be a great candidate for a strong sequel exploring the questions of what happens between Alex and Simon and Dom and what all happened in Alex’s life leading up to this week that left her in such a dire series of situations.
4 out of 5 stars
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