“The Guest” by Emma Cline

Is it almost a cliché to read an Emma Cline book at this point? I feel a little behind the times.

I let Sam pick my next read, and this was it. He'd already read both The Guest and The Girls, and he said this was the better of the two. I did have a brief momentary doubt--shouldn't I read the less good one first, saving the best for last? I can't help but want to read the other one, but I also kind of dread its not-as-goodness. 

Speaking of dread...

Reading The Guest was an intensely uncomfortable experience, from quite early on. When I mentioned this to Sam, he laughed and said, "Yeah, it's like that the whole way through. You just have to remember--she's not you. And then you can see the humor in it." And he was right--I had been living this book as if I were Alex. It felt dangerous, unhealthy, and a little bit dirty. But even after the reminder that this was not my life, I'm not sure what I was seeing (as I mentally cringed and snuck peeks through my fingers) could be called humor.

This is going to be a weird comparison, but this book reminded me of The Nanny Diaries, only dark and edgy. (And Alex is definitely not a nanny.) Alex is a vaguely beautiful 22-year-old who has most recently been living in New York City. She's some combination of escort and prostitute and leech, who has attached herself to the older and (much) wealthier Simon for a late summer month in the Hamptons. Just when Alex is thinking maybe everything in life has become exactly what it always should have been, it begins to devolve into exactly what it always has been. But Alex has an unsettling way of simultaneously settling for and denying the existence of reality. 

I was sucked into this story just as quickly as Alex was almost sucked out to sea (that is, within the first three pages). Yes, I read the whole book in two days. Yes, this is despite the fact that I have a full-time job. I enjoyed the reading experience (if in a slightly bewildered way) but my overwhelming feeling as I turned the last page was one of exceeding relief that it was over.