“I remembered the story as this surreal journey that starts off so light, and this sense for the character that they can live this way forever,” Cline told me in that VF interview. “And by the end, ending up in this place that’s so far from what you thought, and being so estranged from your own life. There’s something really haunting about it to me.”
Of The Guest’s end, she said, “I knew from the beginning the emotional temperature of the ending, how I wanted it to feel. I didn’t know what the specifics were, but I knew where I wanted the book to leave this character.”
That’s the thing about a book like this—the ending, maybe, isn’t so much a what-then as it is a state of mind. I’m content in the lingering unease, the creepy dissonance of an upbeat song playing on repeat.
But just ask Alex: Where did anyone get, in life, being content? Other people who read it have provocative ideas. So, herein, a host of theories.
All of Alex’s maneuverings would be impossible if she didn’t look the way she does: pretty, young, white, with nice clothes. (I didn’t feel any dread for Alex, reading the book. I was feeling dread for the people whom she was impacting, the people without power. Not the Simons or the Helens, but the caretaker at the house where she scratches the painting, and the nanny at the swim club whose charge she co-opts.) But that changes, in the end. She’s in the car accident with Jack, and I’m assuming that the airbags have gone off, and she’s dirty, and even though she’s changed in the bathroom, I think her hair is messy, and that stye in her eye is back. She’s probably got a bloody lip or something—because the way it’s set up, she so wants to be clean. She looks in the mirror, but it’s brushed metal, so she can’t really see what’s going on. When she finally sees Simon, she’s probably got a weird look on her face, because she’s Alex. I don’t think Simon is at all pleased that she’s standing on his lawn, but I don’t think he’s calling the cops, because I don’t think he wants to make a scene. Simon cares too much about appearances, but he’ll just get someone to get her out of there, and then she has nowhere else to go. I think that Alex is not long for the world and that, ultimately, no good comes of Dom. He’s probably hunting her down. —Miwa Messer, creator and host of Poured Over: The B&N Podcast; friend of VF
I think she has to be dead. And that’s a sociocultural read. People like her aren’t arrested. The only thing that stops them is death, right?—Tressie McMillan Cottom, VF contributor and author of Thick: And Other Essays
I read The Guest like I might take lines of cocaine: in small doses inhaled at frequent intervals. I found the protagonist so stressful that I could only assume her consciousness for five pages before taking a break to anxiously pace my room, only to mainline her antics again. So when the novel ended with Alex—after she’s maneuvered herself, over five days, into weekend party rentals, art-filled mansions, members-only beach clubs, and a hookup’s ex-girlfriend’s empty beach house—being stunned into immobility after finally making it to her now ex’s Labor Day party, I was less perplexed by the plot and more subsumed by the book’s overall mood, which felt orchestrated to mimic a drug rush (or even a shopping spree or the fulfillment of any desire) where the high of attainment meets the inevitable comedown, landing with a horrific thud—like someone cannonballing unknowingly into a water-drained pool. —Alexis Cheung, VF contributor and editorial director for Four One Nine and EADEM
Alex dies in the car crash with Jack and goes to Simon’s Labor Day party as a ghostly figure, desperate to resolve her unfinished business with him. Her unwavering belief that supersedes everything, even the finality of death, is that all will be resolved if she can just get to the party, back to Simon and the life she had before. Obsession has kept her alive during the novel’s desperate week, and it now tethers her to earth forever. She will now haunt the place where she last had some modicum of happiness and safety, as an eternal, unwanted guest. —Maggie Robe, marketing & events manager at Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC; friend of VF
The odd thing about Alex is that she is hyperconfident about her ability to get away with things, but she almost always gets caught. The taillight, the painting, Dom’s money, et cetera, et cetera. The story of the book is in some ways the story of all her bad behavior catching up with her, in cumulative fashion. The schadenfreude of seeing her torture all these privileged people is matched only by the schadenfreude of seeing her get her due. So by that logic, my theory is not that she dies or gets killed, but rather that she is finally busted once and for all, whether by a hand on the shoulder from Dom or a pair of cuffs around her wrists. The gig is up, and the Hamptons are once again safe for people who can’t imagine why anyone would steal a shoe. —Michael Hogan, executive digital director
At first I felt a sense of shame come over me, like I just wasn’t getting it. What the fuck is happening here? So I reread the ending, starting from the (second, final) car accident, like a good English major. Then, like a bad English major, I put aside all the drowning/ghost (the Guest = the Ghost?) imagery and arrived at my own little not fully formed take: Alex is critically wounded with a neck injury, on a consciousness-losing number of pills, and looks completely messed up (grimy duffel, funky eye, sweat-stained dress, probably not smelling delish)—but not necessarily like she needs urgent medical attention. Like, no need to call an ambulance—just the cops, very discreetly, which Lori does, while everyone else less discreetly shuns her. (Is this capitalism responding to the mental health crises of the vulnerable or what?!) As the cops show up, with Simon spotting them behind her, she either succumbs to her injuries and self-medication or “goes crazy,” despite her assurances throughout the book that she never would. —Claire Howorth, executive editor
The book begins with Alex nearly drowning, and ends with her actually drowning. When those little girls bump into her, she definitely doesn’t fall. But she did—into the pool. Now, the aquatic references are numerous and echo earlier underwater scenes. Everything she experiences makes more sense now: muffled voices, languid movements, a “sun like a sodium flash.” Why didn’t her limbs work at the end? Her body had gone limp. She used her last bit of power to slightly widen her smile at Simon—not too much, don’t want to look desperate while literally dying—hoping to lure him. —Mike Nizza, publisher of Bloomberg Opinion; friend of VF (and Claire’s husband)
I assumed that some type of security had come to collect Alex, since Simon was looking beyond her in the final scene. Also, she maybe collapsed from injuries sustained in the car accident. The last lines say she couldn’t move, and it seems like the end of the road for her could have been very literal and physical. Whatever happened, though, she loses and the Simons at the party win, in spite of their having to endure the mild discomfort of a strange character at their party. —Kenzie Bryant, staff writer