The Guest

Emma Cline The Guest ISBN: 9780812998634, 9780812998627 Kindle / ASIN: B0B96CSYZD Genre: Literature Goodreads Rating: 0.00 Hardcover, 304 pages Published: 2023 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. 2023 - Verified and revised epub, by zardox (no changes to book content). Thank you to Bill Clegg and everyone at the Clegg Agency, and to Kate Medina and the Random House team. For early help, I’m grateful to Willing Davidson, Hilary Cline, David Gilbert, Alexander Benaim, Sara Freeman, Lexi Freiman, and Megan, Elsie, and Mayme Cline. — The Guest is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Emma Cline All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Random House and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cline, Emma, author. Title: The guest : a novel / Emma Cline. Description: First Edition. | New York : Random House, [2023] Identifiers: LCCN 2022037681 (print) | LCCN 2022037682 (ebook) | ISBN 9780812998627 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780812998634 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Novels. Classification: LCC PS3603.L547 G84 2023 (print) | LCC PS3603.L547 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220812 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022037681 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022037682 Ebook ISBN 9780812998634 Export edition ISBN 9780593597248 randomhousebooks.com Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook Cover design: Oliver Munday Cover photograph: Getty Images ep_prh_6.1_143680504_c0_r1 For Hilary Contents Cover Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 About the Author By Emma Cline _143680504_ 1 This was August. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day. Alex waited for a set to finish before making her way into the water, slogging through until it was deep enough to dive. A bout of strong swimming and she was out, beyond the break. The surface was calm. From here, the sand was immaculate. The light—the famous light—made it all look honeyed and mild: the dark European green of the scrub trees, the dune grasses that moved in whispery unison. The cars in the parking lot. Even the seagulls swarming a trash can. On the shore, the towels were occupied by placid beachgoers. A man tanned to the color of expensive luggage let out a yawn, a young mother watched her children run back and forth to the waterline. What would they see if they looked at Alex? In the water, she was just like everyone else. Nothing strange about a young woman, swimming alone. No way to tell whether she belonged here or didn’t. — When Simon had first taken her to the beach, he’d kicked off his shoes at the entrance. Everyone did, apparently: there were shoes and sandals piled up by the low wood railing. No one takes them? Alex asked. Simon raised his eyebrows. Who would take someone’s shoes? But that had been Alex’s immediate thought—how easy it would be to take things, out here. All sorts of things. The bikes leaning against the fence. The bags unattended on towels. The cars left unlocked, no one wanting to carry their keys on the beach. A system that existed only because everyone believed they were among people like themselves. — Before Alex left for the beach, she had swallowed one of Simon’s painkillers, a leftover from a long-ago back surgery, and already the familiar mental gauze had descended, the surrounding salt water another narcotic. Her heart beat pleasantly, noticeably, in her chest. Why did being in the ocean make you feel like such a good human? She floated on her back, her body moving a little in the push and pull, her eyes closed against the sun. There was a party tonight, hosted by one of Simon’s friends. Or a business friend—all his friends were business friends. Until then, hours to waste. Simon would be working the rest of the day, Alex left to her own devices, as she had been ever since they’d come out here—almost two weeks now. She hadn’t minded. She’d gone to the beach nearly every day. Worked through Simon’s painkiller stash at a steady but undetectable pace, or so she hoped. And ignored Dom’s increasingly unhinged texts, which was easy enough to do. He had no idea where she was. She tried blocking his number, but he got through with new ones. She would change her number as soon as she got the chance. Dom had sent another jag that morning: Alex Alex Answer me Even if the texts still caused a lurch in her stomach, she had only to look up from the phone and it all seemed manageable. She was in Simon’s house, the windows open onto pure green. Dom was in another sphere, one she could pretend no longer quite existed. — Still floating on her back, Alex opened