Guess who’s in the back of a taxi from JFK at 6ammmmmmmmm!!!?
The only book this summer is The Guest. I’ve been thinking about why this happened, how Emma Cline gripped the attention of every single person in my group texts, on Instagram (seriously, consider: what would it take for me to post a photo of a book cover on my Instagram feed in 2023?), and Twitter timeline. Men and women. People with and without followings. Some kind of osmosis happened between my world and this book.
Skip this letter if you haven’t read it yet.
So there are a couple of reasons why I think everyone is obsessed with The Guest:
Everyone thinks they know what The Hamptons are about, so reading a book that takes place there raises a tiny “Oh, I recognize this world,” hand
Seeing a book all over social media makes one inclined to read it. This happened a bit with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (many people discovered it via Hunter Harris’s newsletter), and of course Normal People and Conversations with Friends. But The Guest was 1. The right length, and 2. A book about summer that came out in summer
We like content about women who are trouble (Euphoria, White Lotus, Caroline Calloway,
And WHY as a society are we so voraciously obsessed with stories about tortured WOMEN? I’m kidding, this letter isn’t about that.
I went out east with friends a few weeks ago, and every woman in the house had read The Guest. Over and over, we kept drawing lines from our weekend to the book. Swimming on an empty beach while the sun was eerily setting? Maybe sneaking into a neighbor’s overly crowded party (nobody would know we weren’t invited…)? One of us talking to a younger man at the town dive bar? “This is sooooo The Guest right now.”
Despite the book being about a somewhat disconnected sex worker (it’s a spectrum) who made some outrageously risky decisions, a lot of the book still felt relatable — either in reality or universal fantasies. A house party gone wrong, a phone dying over and over and over and over and over, speeding on Montauk Highway, having imposter syndrome at a beach club… I’ve been there, and if you haven’t, I suggest you live a little.
Naturally, I can’t just tell you that this book exists, and is viral. I had to ask everyone why they can’t stop talking about it!!!: