Rambling Review: The Guest by Emma Cline

I finished The Guest by Emma Cline a couple weeks ago. I was looking for something with a summery vibe and a lonely main character. The Guest gave me that, but I didn’t really enjoy it. About a quarter of the way through the novel, I knew I wasn’t liking it very much, but I was dedicated to finishing it. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. I felt that was a fair rating because while I didn’t like it, The Guest had some positive aspects. 

I thought the concept was intriguing. The main character Alex, a drug-addicted, lying escort, finds herself in a wealthy beach town with her older boyfriend Simon. When Alex gets too drunk at a party, Simon’s infatuation for her evaporates. He asks her to go back to the city for “a while,” which Alex takes as only for a week, though I think most readers understand that he would like to never see her again. Knowing she has nowhere to live in the city, Alex stays in the beach town and searches for a place to sleep every night, so she can reunite with Simon at his Labor Day party. Meanwhile, a man from her past, Dom, sends menacing texts about tracking her down and ruining her life for stealing his drugs and money. Alex avoids his messages, and of course, she lies to everyone around her trying to stay afloat for a week.

I expected and wanted a wacky adventure in a beach town based on the summary. However, I was put off by Alex in the first few pages, and I found that the majority of the novel was unrealistic— in a bad way. I enjoy when stories deviate from reality, but no part of the novel was believable to me. For example, Alex finds a group of friends in the train station after Simon asks her to leave. She somehow manages to convince the friends that she knows some of them, and they bring her home with them. I hated that. I can’t imagine anyone agreeing to bring a strange girl home without confirmation from anyone. In an effort to advance the plot, the story lost its anchor in reality, which happened in several other parts. Another time, she goes to a beach club and meets a child. She convinces the nanny that she is a family friend, and she then spends the whole day playing with the boy and drinking on his family’s tab while the nanny is elsewhere. This part solidified my dislike of the novel. In no situation would a nanny let a child disappear with a young woman whom the family did not inform her of— unless she’s a horrible nanny. These scenes and the novel as a whole lacked grounding and realistic plot. 

Compounded with the unrealistic plot, the dialogue continued to take me out of the novel more than it sucked me in. Cline attempts to use colloquial language in the written form, including filler words “literally” and “like.” In theory, writing dialogue similar to everyday speech is a good idea. However, I don’t think our modern way of speaking translates well to writing. In everyday conversations, other distractions, such as body language or outside noises, allow us not to notice the filler so much. When I’m reading a novel, I want to be immersed in the story, but the filler words stunted my reading and made it difficult to stay in the world of the novel. The dialogue was awkward and added to the unrealistic plot.

Given my dislike of the main character, plot, and dialogue, I’m not sure if I misread the tone of the novel. The novel was, I believe, meant to be tense and anxious. Alex struggles to find anything stable in her life. She has nowhere to live, no money, and leftover problems from previous relationships. She holds onto a phone that doesn’t work out of habit. She lacks security and comfort. While I agree her situation is stress-inducing, I didn’t feel like the pacing or prose made me feel stressed. However, I have heard that others disagreed with me and found their hearts racing while they wondered what Alex would do next. I’m sure plenty of readers connect with her and appreciate her underdog story. Maybe the novel would have affected me more if I liked Alex and was rooting for her. 

However, the ending increased my dislike of The Guest. After getting in a car accident with the teenager she’s staying with, she goes to Simon’s party. She finds Simon, but she fails to reach him for some reason or another. It is unclear as the novel ends before we find out what happens. The ambiguous ending did not suit this book. The build up of Dom’s threats and Alex’s desperation to get Simon back drive the novel and add to the tense atmosphere. However, Cline leaves the reader with nothing. While that may be intentional, I felt frustrated and disappointed after putting hours of reading into a book with no resolution. I wish the ending had wrapped up at least some part of the story.

While I disliked the majority of the book, I did appreciate some aspects of it. I think unreliable narrators are compelling, and I think Alex’s deteriorating state of mind with drugs and stress was the best part of the novel. She is detached from everything, and the third person narration almost feels like we are watching her watch herself. Her poor choices are taken as they are, with very little judgment from herself and from the readers as well— it just is what it is— especially given that she is in survival mode. Alex’s lack of background helps create a mystique about her and mirrors the way the characters in the novel and the readers alike know nothing about her. While the mystery added to her characterization, the detachment made it hard for me to care about her. I experienced her life as it happened, but did not care one way or another about it. However, I did also enjoy the novel’s themes, especially the division between economic classes and the difficulties for those who lack wealth. One thing I appreciated was when Alex wonders what it must be like to not worry about anything, while she grasps at ways to survive for the week. Still, the theme wasn’t enough to carry the lackluster characters, plot, and tone of the novel.

The plot felt unwillingly dragged from one point to the next. I was left wondering why Alex made certain decisions as it felt disjointed, like each part was created separately before being shoved together. Nothing was organic. Nothing made me have a reaction. I wasn’t excited to read, and I wasn’t hoping for the best for the characters. I’ve been on a reading bender this summer, reading about one book a week, and for most other books, I’m desperate to read at any available opportunity, even canceling plans to see what happens. I simply did not care about Alex or what was happening in The Guest. I finished the novel just so that I could move on to something else.