An interloper, a woman running from and towards nothing, a circular journey. In Emma Cline’s “The Guest,” Alex, unemployed, manipulative and afraid, leaves New York City to go out East. Pursued by a skeleton in her very recent past, she chases the last moments of summer.
Cline’s story is slow and subtle. The promise of a thrilling plot is quickly doused by the ever present setting of Alex’s plotting head as she wanders around her mythical suburban promised land. At once surrounded by and severed from everything she’s ever wanted, Alex is completely and utterly alone. Her solitary journey mainly consists of brief, manipulation-based acquaintances and anxious avoidance.
A quiet sadness pervades the novel, peeking out between Alex’s casually cruel and questionable decisions. There is something distinctly devastating about watching an unlikable main character ruin her own life and the lives of everyone around her without a spare thought. Alex acts as though her actions are normal reactions, not glaringly immoral and often insane. Even more harrowing is her awareness of her place in the world as an archetype of a particular kind of young woman–despite her casual cruelty and constant manipulation, Alex herself has suffered. In a novel that decenters plot, glimpses behind the curtain at Alex’s brain are the most interesting part of the book. They help craft an at once familiar and understandable but deeply unknowable character.
Veterans of Ms. Gruder’s English III class will recognize the influence of John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” in Cline’s suburban subversion of the “hero’s journey” trope. “The Guest” is “The Swimmer” for a new generation–still cynical, still filled with environmental symbolism, still loudly ambiguous and unresolved, but now transposed into a world of drained cell phones and even more drained modern affluence. In their melancholia and vulgarity, even secondary characters offer no respite.
Cline’s novel won’t work for everyone–there is no satisfaction to be gained here, no easy reading and no fun. But for those willing to wait for nothing, to break bread with the miserable and untethered, “The Guest” is sure to consume.
