The Guest

A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls. Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island; and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party; and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone; but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others; Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes; gated driveways; and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is; at first; closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality; she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next; a cipher leaving destruction in her wake. Taut; propulsive; and impossible to look away from; Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.