> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 23 May 2023
  • ISBN: 9781784743741
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99

The Guest

‘The tension never wavers’ (GUARDIAN)




The hotly anticipated new novel from the author of the global phenomenon, The Girls

*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

  • Published: 23 May 2023
  • ISBN: 9781784743741
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Emma Cline

Emma Cline is from California. Her first novel, The Girls, was a Sunday Times bestseller and the highest selling debut novel of 2016. It has been published in over 40 countries worldwide. In 2017 Emma was selected as a Granta Best Young American Novelist.

Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and the Paris Review, where she was awarded the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and have been selected for inclusion in the 2017 and 2018 Best American Short Story anthologies. Her story ‘What Can You Do with a General’ was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2019.

Also by Emma Cline

See all

Praise for The Guest

I loved every moment of The Guest: the intensity, the control, the atmosphere, the psychological escalation, the astonishing social observation, the profound and devastating visions of the void achieved with flicks of the wrist, the way it lets nobody off the hook and yet is not without deep humanity

SAM LIPSYTE

Cline has a crime writer's gift for revelatory storytelling, ramping up tension like an HBO pro

Big Issue

The talented Ms. Cline . . . Her prose is drifty and wire-taut, easy on the eye, with an awful undertow of unease that never lets up. The pathology brilliantly observed by The Guest would not feel so edgy if it were not perilously close to an aspirational ideal

GEOFF DYER

A dream-like, foreboding novel and worthy follow-up to the sensation The Girls

i

Cline's writing at its very best - hypnotically propulsive, viscerally disquieting, and moving in the most unpredictable ways

Doug Battersby, Financial Times

As bracing as saltwater... Cline possesses unmistakable talent; her bursts of genuine originality and startling insight make that clear

Ann Manov, Daily Telegraph

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

The Girls was exceptional; The Guest...is even better... Compulsively readable... The Guest is as refreshing as a dip in a cool pool on a hot day

i

Drawing the reader inexorably on to the heightened, rug-pulling denouement, this is beach reading at its finest

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

Heady scent of hotsummers and dark secrets

The Times 'Best Books of 2023'

The tension never wavers . . . This is rich material for Cline, who trains a chilly eye on the preposterous affluence and exclusivity of that part of the world

Emma Brockes, Guardian

Every sentence as sharp as a scalpel . . . tantalizing

Liska Jacobs, New York Times Book Review

At once chilling and eminently evocative of the rarefied world it portrays . . . a definite contender for Status Vacation Book of 2023

Vogue

Atmospheric and at times incandescent

Michelle Hart, Los Angeles Times

A tale of the ultimate grifter. Doused in ambiguity and foreboding

Imy Brighty-Potts, Independent

This unsettling but gripping novel takes us deep into the mind of a woman living a shadowy half-life

Vanessa Berridge, Daily Mirror

Crucial reading for any young woman

Alex Peake-Tomkinson, Evening Standard

Undeniably compelling and atmospheric... a poolside-worthy page-turner

Sunday Express

A taut, tense novel... The Guest is a strong follow-up... Her [Cline's] prose is limpid and propulsive, sustaining an atmosphere of dread.

Economist

The Girls was exceptional; The Guest, with its exquisite pacing and deliciously muddled moral compass, is even better

Emily Watkins, Scotland on Sunday

The Guest... cements Cline's place as one of America's great contemporary stylists

Arin Keeble, Guardian

Supremely readable... propulsive

Markie Robson, Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

A new tense summer adventure

Stylist

[An] arresting observational eye

Alex Clark, Financial Times

A searing portrayal of the precariat? Or a slick summer thriller? The answer is: both . . . you won't be able to look away

Laura Battle, Financial Times

The wealthy clique depicted in Cline's unsettling second novel is by turns boorish and menacing - but you won't be able to look away

Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

The Guest is everything I look for in a novel: cool, subtle, clinical

Nicole Flattery, author of NOTHING SPECIAL, Observer, *Summer Reads of 2023*

The ideal mix of hazy summer glamour and shimmering threat for compulsive beach reading... A gripping, almost ghastly book

Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION, Observer, *Summer Reads of 2023*

A thrilling dissection of survival and how far its protagonist will (or can) go to achieve it

Virginia Feito, author of MRS MARCH, Observer, *Summer Reads of 2023*

A beach read that ticks all the boxes

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

[The Guest’s] atmosphere is equally apprehensive [as The Girls] and Cline’s eye for the fragility of insider-outsiders is as gimlet-sharp as before

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

The Guest… [is] as relentlessly spellbinding as her debut

New Statesman, *Books of the Year*