B. A. Paris' 'The Guest': a review
Suspense-thriller fans are in for a treat with the recent release of Franco-Irish author B.A. Paris' eighth novel, The Guest.
The Guest centres around married couple Iris and Gabriel Pelley, who return home from vacation to find that their friend Laure has been sleeping in their bed, wearing Iris’ clothes, and has moved some of their furniture around. Laure has just discovered her husband of twenty years Pierre has fathered a child with another woman – a betrayal that is especially painful since she is unable to have children.
But when it seems as if Laure may never move out of her friends' home, tensions run high and suspicion grows, not just in the Pelley home, but also in the neighbourhood.
The Guest tricks readers into thinking they know exactly what will happen and how. But Paris, a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, who burst onto the fiction writing scene in 2016 with her debut novel Behind Closed Doors, which sold 3.5 million copies, has mastered the art of suspense, suspicion, and character development, and keeps readers sipping through her storytelling straw until the very last drop with twists, turns, and cliffhangers at the end of each chapter.
Readers are immediately catapulted into the story’s climax through the prologue and introduced to four of the six main characters. This may seem a tad puzzling at first, as there is so much going on that it takes a while to grasp who is who. But once chapter one begins and we learn more about each character’s backstory, it’s smooth sailing and page-turning from there.
Iris, the protagonist, is a self-proclaimed “home enhancer”, not interior designer, because “she didn’t have any qualifications … something she was at pains to point out to potential clients”. She is married to Gabriel, and they share one daughter, Beth, with whom she does not have the best relationship.
Gabriel is a surgeon who has taken a sabbatical. He can no longer perform his duties after having watched Charlie Ingram, a childhood friend of his daughter’s, take his last breath – at the bottom of a nearby quarry following a bicycle accident. The pain of not being able to save Charlie, coupled with the last words that Charlie said to him, has continued to haunt Gabriel.
Laure and Pierre are longtime friends of Iris and Gabriel. They are Beth’s godparents, and both couples do everything together – even keep the keys to each other’s houses whenever the other is out of town.
And Esme and Hugh are new neighbours who have just moved into the house up the street that Iris wanted herself and Gabriel to purchase.
Paris has skilfully crafted a world that readers can easily visualise. Through references to towns and cities in England and Paris, to each character’s flaws, strengths, and modes of reasoning, readers get to delve deep into the lives of fictional characters who could easily be real-life people, while questioning the reader's moral and logical decision-making.
Sounds delectable? Crack open The Guest for a grippingly good read.
