Keeping Up Appearances: The Guest By Emma Cline

Despite the title I have given this review, Hyacinth Bouquet is nowhere in evidence, no matter how magnificent a character she was. No, this story is more reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can, a great film where Frank Abagnale Jr. creates multiple characters for himself to elude capture by the FBI. Ultimately, they offer him a job! It was based on a true story, played out by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, some think, at their best.

The Guest is not a true story but does follow the fortunes (and misfortunes) of Alex, that’s Alex without a surname, at least as far as the reader is aware, because that would make her too real and in her life as a con artist, it’s best not to make yourself too well known.

In New York, Alex lives life on the edge. Lacking the talent to achieve her ambition of a stage career, she has become an escort, economical with the truth, forcing herself to please people, especially men. Our introduction to her is oblique; we learn about her through her behaviour, through the way other people treat her. She’s unreliable, with few morals and little sincerity yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She allows herself to be used and abused and kids herself she’s in control even though events repeatedly prove she isn’t, not really; alcohol and painkillers can only numb so much. Imagine living a life of make believe where in reality, someone else is always pulling the strings.

...she has become an escort, economical with the truth, forcing herself to please people, especially men. Our introduction to her is oblique..

.Several mistakes leave her with no choice but to leave New York; she has upset too many people but her ability to grift leads her to Simon who, unknowingly, offers her a means of escape, and she leaves to spend the summer with him, at his house near the beach. Fate hands her a way out of her problems… so she assumes, until a single mistake causes Simon to send her back to New York. She takes her chance, however, and seizes an opportunity to stay near the beach.

And we follow, shadowing her every move, seeing before she does the pitfalls which soon mean it’s time for her to move on again. She makes it look so easy, seemingly so open, innocent, naive, a dropping of the eyes, a glancing touch: how easily are some people charmed? She knows not to take too much, never empty the wallet, lift a single ruby earring which has lost its partner rather than a pair of sparkling diamonds more likely to be missed; a sleeve of pills, not the whole packet. But Alex’s is not really a charmed life.

There are merest hints of what makes her tick; she denies us knowledge of her distant history so her past is hazy to say the least, but anyone who believes you should never reveal all your cards as vigorously as she does, clearly having a defensive shield solidly in place and we detect she is actually scrambling for love. How cruel can life be? The ever-present threat of the absent Dom keeps that frightening flicker alive.

Until the end, when the reader understands the thread has run out and the novel ends not with a bang but a whimper

.Alex seems older for her years, forced to be independent by circumstance rather than choice, perhaps, but her dalliance with Jack, while expedient, seems a little distasteful - as she comes to realise herself, horrified when she discovers he’s actually only seventeen. We become privy to yet more survival tricks for life in a different kind of jungle! Yet the narrative drifts as Alex tries to while away the days before she can return to Simon. She’s wasting time and the pace of the novel falters.

‘What did it mean when the waves had a milky cast!’ Alex didn’t know if it was a favourable or unfavourable sign; as a metaphor for her life, it was perfect. She had no idea how things would work out and just had to have faith that ‘nothing (was) insurmountable’. To believe she had ‘lost the thread’ was unthinkable. Until the end, when the reader understands the thread has run out and the novel ends not with a bang but a whimper.

Well written, the prose is fluid and readable. The reader is drawn in and pushed onwards, wondering what will happen but the finale avoids telling us. I know my interpretation but it might be different from yours and I would actually like to have known Cline’s thoughts, would have liked the ends tied up. Instead, a novel I read at speed, wanting to know the end, left me dissatisfied, but maybe that’s the point: no matter how hard she tries, Alex will drift and never find peace.


The Guest is published by Vintage