The Guest

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this "spellbinding" (Vogue), "smoldering" (The Washington Post) novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

"Under Cline's command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force."--The New York Times

"Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another."

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 rarefied 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.

These book club questions were written by Bookclubs staff.

Book club questions for The Guest by Emma Cline

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

What did you think of the ending? How did you imagine the events played out after you closed the book?

Consider the people Alex encounters. Who was she taking advantage of? Who was taking advantage of her? Where did these lines become blurry?

How would you describe Simon? Do you think he treated Alex fairly? What about Dom? Jack?

How does Alex user her age and her femininity to her advantage? Do you think these are finite resources? What other tools does she employ to try to stay in this rarefied world?

Did you find yourself rooting for Alex? Why or why not? Was there a point at which your feelings about her changed? If so, when was it?

What emotions did the story—and Alex’s behavior—evoke for you?

What does The Guest have to say about power dynamics and how they can shift?

How does Emma Cline characterize the world and the people of East Long Island? How does she characterize Alex?

What themes stood out to you in The Guest?

Alex steals a stone from Helen’s home. What does this stone come to represent throughout the novel?

More than once, Alex gets the sense that she is ghost, and has a couple dangerous experiences in cars and in the water. What do you think is the significance of this?

Discuss Alex's mysterious background and elusive past. How do her secrets propel the events that unfold? What do you think motivates her to conceal parts of herself?

Alex prides herself on being able to navigate others' desires to get what she needs. Do you think she takes advantage of people, or are they equally complicit? Where do you draw the line?

The setting of the privileged Hamptons world plays a big role. How does Alex both infiltrate, but remain an outsider in this insular community? What point do you think the author makes by contrasting old money vs new money?

Evaluate Alex's shifting morality as the story progresses. Is she manipulative out of necessity or sheer ruthlessness? Where does she cross ethical lines?

Discuss the significance of the title "The Guest". What different meanings could it imply about Alex's transient presence over one summer week?

What did you make of the open-ended conclusion? Do you think Alex faces consequences or escapes unscathed? How would you interpret the ending?

The Guest Book Club Questions PDF

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