The Guest

Summer on the East End of Long Island is winding down, and Alex has worn out her welcome. After a misstep at a dinner party, the older man she has been living with has her driven to the train station and sent back to the city with a ticket. She doesn't go. With little money and a phone ruined by water, she stays on, relying on one real talent: she can sense what other people want and become it.

What follows is the week leading up to Labor Day. Alex drifts between hedged lanes, gated driveways and sun-bleached dunes, sliding into a wealthy world that has no place for her. She moves from one borrowed situation to the next, driven by desperation and a loose, shifting sense of right and wrong. Each time she passes as someone she isn't, she knows the disguise could fall away at any moment, and the people she meets pay for it.

Emma Cline, author of The Girls, builds a tense, fast-moving novel around a woman who is part guest, part intruder, and who unsettles every household she enters. It is a sharp study of class, performance and survival, and it is hard to stop reading.