Alex is not dead, but she does sometimes imagine herself as a ghost, “wandering the land of the living,” or as an “inert piece of social furniture-only her presence was required, the general size and shape of a young woman.” If this is a non-room, we might think of Alex as a non-heroine. The room is a bit like Alex herself: studiously un-particular, with an undefined quality that intrigues the viewer just enough to inspect some contours. It seems to be the only item of interest in this space, which is otherwise “a non-room, dead and unused.” She palms the one item that catches her eye, a small, pleasingly carved stone-perhaps an animal, perhaps just an abstract shape. She drifts into an empty, impersonal room, which houses an armchair, a flower in a vase, a fake log in an unused fireplace, and a few ugly but probably expensive knickknacks. In the early pages of Emma Cline’s “ The Guest,” Alex, the titular guest, wanders away from a dinner party at a palatial home on Long Island.
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