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The Guest Room
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò, Grace Experience
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
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The Guest Room
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Publisher's Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes the spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong: Two men lie dead in a suburban living room, two women are on the run from police, and a marriage is ripping apart at the seams.
When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night.
In the aftermath, Kristin and Richard's life rapidly spirals into nightmare. The police throw them out of their home, now a crime scene; Richard's investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave; and Kristin is unsure if she can forgive her husband for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters who will kill her in a heartbeat.
A captivating, chilling story about shame and scandal, The Guest Room is a riveting novel from one of our greatest storytellers.
What the critics say
"Heartbreaking.... Unexpected and refreshing...I won't give away of the surprising twists and turns that The Guest Room takes on the path to Bohjalian's daring conclusion; I'll only note that much of the pleasure that comes from reading any well-constructed narrative lies in trying to anticipate how the author will write himself out of seemingly inescapable corners. But here, for a change, we also have a novelist who seems more concerned with examining and dramatizing a much more universal question: whether, in the end, any amount of love or compassion, retreat or nobility or forgiveness, can overcome the remorseless workings of evil." (Skip Horack, The San Francisco Chronicle)
"The Guest Room [has] an edge-of-the-seat momentum that propels the reader straight to the last page.... For those who value the well-researched novel, the author's 18th book will please.... Promises to enlighten and entertain." (Anita Shreve, The Washington Post)
"The book's real throbbing heart is Anahit, an aspiring young dancer from Armenia.... The narrative's frequent somersaults from Anahit's devastating backstory to the Chapman family's more sheltered world is a remarkable artistic feat...a steely exploration of the very human cost of bachelor parties and other games of male pleasure." (Eliot Schrefer, USA Today)
“Within the first few pages of The Guest Room, the latest novel by prolific author Chris Bohjalian, the booze-fueled bacchanalia that began as the fulfillment of men’s fantasies turns into a Helter-Skelter-like nightmare.... Bohjalian, whose books often explore the contrast between surface lightness and the darkness that lies below, takes on upper-middle class America in this novel, ripping apart any illusion of safety or moral high ground in a headlong collision between the comforting rituals of suburbia and the viciousness of the Russian mob.... [Bohjalian is] at his best in The Guest Room, one of his most compelling books so far, combining an explosive premise, a timely social topic, and fast-paced storytelling with a purpose." (Amy Driscoll, The Miami Herald)