Emma Cline's The Guest packages rich liberal guilt for poolside consumption

Emma Cline, the author of the bestselling Manson cult novel The Girls, has a type for her leading ladies: “Pretty but creepy,” Kirkus Reviews calls it.

In reference to Alex, the antihero of The Guest, the first part may be too generous. As Alex descends from hot grifter to homeless has-been at the end of a long losing streak one summer, she blames a rigid class system. But Alex is also a pretty bad girl, and the pair’s self-indulgent class resentment turns Cline’s new novel into a pretty creepy book.