# The Guest (novel)
*The Guest* is a 2023 novel by the American writer Emma Cline, published by [Random House](https://www.edgepedia.org/random-house). It follows Alex, a 22-year-old escort who, after being dismissed from the [Long Island](https://www.edgepedia.org/long-island) summer home of her older boyfriend Simon, spends the five days before his [Labor Day](https://www.edgepedia.org/labor-day) party drifting through the Hamptons, deceiving strangers into believing she belongs there.[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) • [2](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780812998627) It is Cline's second novel, following *The Girls* (2016) and the story collection *Daddy* (2020).[3](https://www.emmacline.com/writing)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House, May 16, 2023; 304 pages; ISBN 978-0-8129-9862-7; hardcover price $28[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) • [2](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780812998627) |
| Premise | A 22-year-old grifter, cut off by the wealthy Simon after a misstep at a dinner party, schemes her way through the last week of summer on Long Island[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) • [4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/) |
| Timespan | A single week, ending at Simon's annual Labor Day party[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/05/09/emma-cline-guest-review/) |
| Inspiration | John Cheever's short story "The Swimmer"; the idea took shape after Cline's first visit to the Hamptons in the summer of 2015[6](https://airmail.news/books/2023/5/a-summer-odyssey) |
| Recognition | New York Times bestseller; longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Belletrist Book Club pick; best-of-year lists at the New Yorker, Time, NPR, the Washington Post, and others[7](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni66055078/) |
| Adaptation | A24 and Square Peg in negotiations for film rights, with Sadie Sink in talks to star and Lorene Scafaria in talks to write and direct[7](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni66055078/) |
## Plot
Alex is a sex worker in New York City whose client base has dried up, who has been evicted by her roommates, and who has angered a dangerous ex, Dom, for reasons the novel withholds.[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/) She meets Simon, an affluent older man who does not know she is a sex worker, and he invites her to spend August at his house "out east" on Long Island.[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) Her role is to be beautiful, charming, and accommodating of his ego; in exchange she has access to his home, a private chef, and a new wardrobe.[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/)
The rupture comes at a dinner party, where a misstep (in one account, falling into a pool with the host's much younger husband) embarrasses Simon enough that he sends her back to the city with a one-way ticket.[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/) • [8](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/emma-cline-on-the-guest) Alex, who has nowhere to go, does not board the train. She convinces herself that if she can survive invisibly until Simon's Labor Day party, he will take her back.[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) Over the following five days she attaches herself to a shared rental of hard partiers, a vacant pool house, a beach club she enters by borrowing a toddler, and a series of strangers whose assumptions that she belongs she exploits; along the way she sleeps with another girl's boyfriend and damages a valuable painting.[2](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780812998627) • [4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/) The novel ends ambiguously, at the party, and the ending became its most debated feature.[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/)
## Composition and influences
Cline signed a $2 million, three-book deal with Random House in 2014, at age 25, while already at work on stories that became *Daddy*.[6](https://airmail.news/books/2023/5/a-summer-odyssey) In a letter included in the publisher's book-club kit she explains that she began writing the novel in 2016.[9](https://booksofbrilliance.com/2026/10/09/the-guest-movie-sadie-sink-emma-cline/) The book took shape after her first visit to the Hamptons in the summer of 2015. She described the setting as a place "not really oriented towards temporary visitors or outsiders," designed in overt and subtle ways to delineate who should be there and who should not.[6](https://airmail.news/books/2023/5/a-summer-odyssey)
[John Cheever](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-cheever)'s short story "The Swimmer" was a stated source of inspiration.[6](https://airmail.news/books/2023/5/a-summer-odyssey) Reviewers also heard Cheever's register in the prose itself; the *New York Times Book Review* compared Cline's "old-fashioned prose style" to Cheever's capture of "the rot beneath wealthy suburbia."[10](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/the-guest/nytimes.com/2023/05/10/books/review/emma-cline-the-guest.html/)
## Style and structure
The novel is narrated in the third person, and several critics identified the distance this creates as central to its effect: the reader stays outside Alex's mind, observing her behavior as the wealthy characters do.[11](https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-guest-a-novel/) Alex has almost no backstory. No past trauma is revealed to explain her; the essayist at *Public Books* reads this as a deliberate refusal of the "trauma plot," a form Parul Sehgal has described as increasingly common in contemporary fiction, and places the novel in the tradition Christina Fogarasi calls the "anti-trauma trauma novel."[12](https://www.publicbooks.org/mute-compulsion/) The *New Yorker* situated the book in two traditions at once: the post-*Parasite* class satire it only seems to join, and the picaresque (a tradition of episodic tales about a roguish drifting hero), whose episodic drifting hero Alex resembles.[13](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/emma-clines-vacay-bummer-novel)
The plotlessness divided readers. Kirkus called it "a propulsive read starring an irresistible antihero" whose tension hums "in every sentence."[1](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/) Others found the lack of arc a defect: the *Telegraph* called it "a 15-page character sketch stretched to novel length" and criticized its "anticlimactic non-ending," while the *New York Times* likewise judged that the book "runs out of steam" as Alex's deceptions come to a head.[10](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/the-guest/nytimes.com/2023/05/10/books/review/emma-cline-the-guest.html/) Time framed the same qualities as the point: Alex's movements create rising dread, and the ambiguous ending is "less unsatisfying than it is a final fraying of the nerves."[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/)
## Reception and commercial performance
The book was a national bestseller and a cultural phenomenon in summer 2023. Within two months of its May release, TikTok posts about it had garnered more than 153 million views, 5 million of them devoted specifically to the ambiguous ending; [Emma Roberts](https://www.edgepedia.org/emma-roberts) selected it as the July pick for the Belletrist book club.[4](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/) It was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and named a best book of the year by the New Yorker, Time, NPR, the Washington Post, the [Financial Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/financial-times), Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Glamour, Newsweek, and Good Housekeeping, among others.[7](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni66055078/) British press listed it as a Times "Book of 2023" and a Financial Times Best Summer Read.[14](https://wp.penguin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Vintage-2024-Paperbacks-Jan-June-Catalogue.pdf)
Critical opinion ranged from raves to pans. The Guardian's review called it "the more controlled work of a fine talent maturing on its own terms," with "strange depths and an arresting originality"; a second Guardian review praised its wringing of "nuance, tension and contradiction" from a deceptively simple premise.[15](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/09/the-guest-by-emma-cline-review-strange-depths-arresting-originality-the-girls) • [16](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/24/the-guest-by-emma-cline-review-a-stylish-follow-up-to-the-girls) The Washington Post described it as "a smoldering thriller that explores desire and deception from the point of view of an escort named Alex," its plot "stretched tight over a single week."[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/05/09/emma-cline-guest-review/) The TLS, while positive, read Alex's flatness as intentional, arguing that her "scrubbed biography" intensifies the critique of "the inescapable hollowness of American patriarchal capitalism."[10](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/the-guest/nytimes.com/2023/05/10/books/review/emma-cline-the-guest.html/)
## Film adaptation
Screen rights to the novel became a sought-after property after publication. In October 2026, Deadline reported that after a bidding war with roughly a dozen offers, A24 and [Ari Aster](https://www.edgepedia.org/ari-aster)'s production company Square Peg had landed the rights, with [Sadie Sink](https://www.edgepedia.org/sadie-sink) in talks to star as Alex and to produce, and [Lorene Scafaria](https://www.edgepedia.org/lorene-scafaria), director of *Hustlers* (2019), in talks to write and direct.[7](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni66055078/) • [17](https://theplaylist.net/the-guest-adaptation-sadie-sink-a24-lorene-scafaria-20261009/) As of those reports the deal remained under negotiation, with no other cast members announced and no production or release date set.[18](https://protextile.info/general/the-guest-what-we-know-so-far/)
## References
1. [THE GUEST by Emma Cline, Kirkus Reviews](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emma-cline/the-guest-cline/)
2. [The Guest, review, Publishers Weekly](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780812998627)
3. [Writing, Emma Cline official site](https://www.emmacline.com/writing)
4. ["The Guest" Is the Anxious-Girl Book of the Summer, Time](https://time.com/6296014/the-guest-emma-cline-review/)
5. [Emma Cline's "The Guest" is a thriller in expensive territory, The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/05/09/emma-cline-guest-review/)
6. [A Summer Odyssey: An Interview with Novelist Emma Cline, Air Mail](https://airmail.news/books/2023/5/a-summer-odyssey)
7. [Sadie Sink and Lorene Scafaria Eyeing Adaptation of Emma Cline's "The Guest" at A24 and Square Peg, Deadline via IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni66055078/)
8. [Emma Cline on "The Guest," Creative Vulnerability, and Finding Inspiration in Playboy Bunny Memoirs, Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/emma-cline-on-the-guest)
9. [The Guest Movie: Sadie Sink in Talks to Star in Emma Cline Adaptation, Books of Brilliance](https://booksofbrilliance.com/2026/10/09/the-guest-movie-sadie-sink-emma-cline/)
10. [All Book Marks reviews for The Guest by Emma Cline, Book Marks](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/the-guest/nytimes.com/2023/05/10/books/review/emma-cline-the-guest.html/)
11. [The Guest: A Novel Summary & Study Guide, BookRags](https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-guest-a-novel/)
12. [Mute Compulsion, Public Books](https://www.publicbooks.org/mute-compulsion/)
13. [Emma Cline's Vacay-Bummer Novel, The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/emma-clines-vacay-bummer-novel)
14. [Vintage 2024 Paperbacks catalogue, Penguin](https://wp.penguin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Vintage-2024-Paperbacks-Jan-June-Catalogue.pdf)
15. [The Guest by Emma Cline review, The Guardian, 9 May 2023](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/09/the-guest-by-emma-cline-review-strange-depths-arresting-originality-the-girls)
16. [The Guest by Emma Cline review, The Guardian, 24 May 2023](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/24/the-guest-by-emma-cline-review-a-stylish-follow-up-to-the-girls)
17. ["The Guest": Sadie Sink in Talks, Lorene Scafaria Eyed to Helm, The Playlist](https://theplaylist.net/the-guest-adaptation-sadie-sink-a24-lorene-scafaria-20261009/)
18. [The Guest: What We Know So Far, ProTextile](https://protextile.info/general/the-guest-what-we-know-so-far/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Prose fiction › Prose works by nation, language, and period › Prose works by nation and language › American and Canadian novels*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license