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The Guest

The Guest

Summary

*A FINANCIAL TIMES Best Book of 2023 * A NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year 2023 * A TIMES 'Book of 2023' * 'Addictive' STYLIST Books to Look Out For 2023 * 'Destined to be the status read of 2023' HARPER'S BAZAAR BEST NEW FICTION *

Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome...

One 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, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake.

Taut, sensual and impossible to look away from, The Guest captures the latent heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge.

PRAISE FOR EMMA CLINE

'Taut, beautiful and savage' GUARDIAN

'Stunning . . . thrilling . . . a spectacular achievement' THE TIMES

'Something about Cline's intimate tone, her talent for conjuring the feeling of being alive, is entirely and uniquely her own' RACHEL KUSHNER

'An astonishingly gifted stylist' BRANDON TAYLOR

Reviews

  • Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, it's a gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality . . . take it to the beach and savour every page
    Rob Doyle, Observer

About the author

Emma Cline

Emma Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review and The Best American Short Stories. She received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O'Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.
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