The Guest (4*)

The extended palm on the striking cover unlocks the key to Emma Cline's second novel: it's that being homeless--or in the current parlance, "unhoused"--in the Hamptons, isn't that different from anywhere else except for the high gloss.  

We watch as Alex, an unsympathetic protagonist if ever there was one, falls from what she believes is grace.  Twenty-two and pretty but not quite beautiful enough to model (a profession that allows women to profit from their looks without necessarily having to engage in sex work) Alex operates with animal instinct through the haze of booze, recreational drugs and pain killers.  Her attempt to restore her temporary status as a one-percent accessory depends on her familiarity with the scene and the kindness of not-quite-strangers, a delusional fantasy that the reader always knows won't end well.  

Yet Cline keeps us turning the pages, almost hypnotically, to find out how Alex survives an exile that she believes will last only until, wait for it, LABOR Day.  Cline also allows readers to choose their own ending, which subversively enables them to recognize--or not--an unpleasant truth:  society would prefer that the homeless remain invisible, and certainly not appear in the pages of a "hot girl" summer read.  After finishing The Guest, I read several reviews from leading critics and not a single one identified homelessness as the book's primary theme.  Many focused on her superb writing and symbolism--as a swimmer, I particularly enjoyed the ocean as a metaphor for life itself--almost willfully embracing Cline's evocation of milieu in much the same way that Alex does without ever questioning its lack of meaning.

Recently, Jennifer Egan, another female novelist (A Visit from the Good Squad, The Candy House), approached the topic with a long non-fiction piece in The New Yorker.  She empathetically profiled several people in supportive housing who survived on the streets, as opposed to the beach. You cheer on these individuals--whose back stories are far more compelling than Alex's, but whose bad choices, like hers, have landed them in dire straits-- and hope their lives will get better with government intervention.

In my ending for The Guest, Alex prays "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  In other words, the rich folk aren't going to help you, baby, so support political strategies that increase their tax rates NOW.