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Title details for The Guest by Emma Cline - Available

The Guest

A Novel

by Emma Cline
Carlotta Brentan
Audiobook
6 of 6 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
6 of 6 copies available
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this “spellbinding” (Vogue), “smoldering” (The Washington Post) novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
“Under Cline’s command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force.”—The New York Times
A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • VULTURE’S INAUGURAL "BEACH BOOK READS" BOOK CLUB PICK • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Glamour, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Slate, Time Out, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit, Bookreporter
“Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another.”
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 rarefied 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 16, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780147524065
      • File size: 247787 KB
      • Duration: 08:36:13

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 6, 2023
      A 22-year-old woman loses her apartment and her grip on reality in the provocative latest from Cline (The Girls). After Alex’s sex work dries up, she gets kicked out of her place in New York City and takes up the offer from Simon, an affluent older man, to spend the summer in the Hamptons. All goes well until a week before Simon’s Labor Day party, when Alex dings his car, and Simon suggests she head back to the city. Hoping to preserve what luster she can in Simon’s eyes, she doesn’t mention she has nowhere to go and convinces herself she’ll be welcome at his party. She then launches a series of schemes to get through the next five days, taking advantage of strangers’ assumptions that she belongs. As Alex wanders from a rental full of hard partiers to a pool house on property left vacant for renovations, she draws on her sex work skills to keep herself welcome and leaves a trail of destruction. Before the first couple days are out, she’s slept with another girl’s boyfriend and damaged a blue-chip painting, while holding out hope, however misguided, that Simon will be happy to see her again. Cline has a keen eye for class differences and makes Alex into an intriguing protagonist who has learned to be observant, but must also recognize she’s losing her judgment if she wants to survive. Like watching a car crash, this is hard to look away from. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Carlotta Brentan narrates the story of a seemingly aimless young woman who is trying to survive. Alex is an unlikable grifter who moves through the world with no thought about the damage she causes to others or the harm she inflicts. Adrift after her relationship with an older man ends, she finds herself at loose ends on Long Island with no plan for how to make it through the upcoming holiday weekend. Brentan's flat delivery perfectly suits Alex's continual drugged state and affected indifference. Brentan provides a slightly brighter tone for secondary characters who interact with Alex. This ambiguous story is saved by Brentan's narration. K.M.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 10, 2024

      In her newest novel, Cline (the New York Times best-selling author of The Girls) follows a young woman whose only aim in life seems to be getting the most out of people before she disposes of them. Alex is adrift, having been discarded by Simon, the wealthy older man she was staying with. Now, with just a backpack and a dead phone, Alex awaits Labor Day, which signals the end of summer on Long Island's swanky East End. Always able to ascertain others' desires, Alex uses her prowess to remain on Long Island, bouncing from gated home to gated home, leaving only after causing destruction. The haziness of the novel, which is appropriate for the end-of-summer setting, is further enhanced by Carlotta Brentan's perfectly attuned narration. Brentan melancholically voices a young woman who is both in control and in over her head, capturing Alex's listlessness as she wiles away the days, simultaneously using others and being used herself. Alex's fate seems sealed from the first page, but listeners won't be able to stop until the very end. VERDICT A propulsive, unputdownable listen with excellent narration.--Elyssa Everling

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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