The Night Guest
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3.9 • 38 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
One morning Ruth wakes thinking a tiger has been in her seaside house. Later that day a formidable woman called Frida arrives, looking as if she's blown in from the sea. In fact she's come to care for Ruth. Frida and the tiger: both are here to stay, and neither is what they seem.
Which of them can Ruth trust? And as memories of her childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency, can she even trust herself?
The Night Guest is mesmerising novel about love, dependence, and the fear that the things you know best can become the things you're least certain about. It introduces a writer who comes to us fully formed, working wonders with language, renewing our faith in the power of fiction to tap the mysterious workings of our minds, and keeping us spellbound.
Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award
'The Night Guest is such an accomplished and polished debut. There's a delicacy and poignancy to the writing, combined with almost unbearable suspense. I love books in which I have no idea what's going to happen next.' Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life
'A rapturous, fearsome fable of grief and love.' Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut
'The Night Guest is an extraordinary novel. At once a tender thriller and an exquisitely constructed meditation on time and memory, it is propelled by sentence after sentence of masterful prose. With The Night Guest, Fiona MacFarlane announces herself as a writer to be read, admired, and read again.' Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
'An enrapturing debut novel that toys with magical realism while delivering a fresh fable.'Kirkus Review
'impressive debut ... (with) broad appeal to literary readers and bookclubs.' Australian Bookseller & Publisher
'Rich and suspenseful . . . McFarlane gives a flourish to even the smallest observations . . . This book is at once a beautifully imagined portrait of isolation and an unsettling psychological thriller.' Publishers Weekly
'Impressive ... McFarlane is in complete control ... dotting her narrative with careful, cumulative details like a pointillist painter ... There's precision in her choice of words and their sense of anticipation dangles the reader over the lip of every page ... [The novel] is a clear sighted and compelling exploration of the metaphors and realities of ageing with all its anxiety and wobbly paranoia, and you love Ruth as you travel with her to the book's end and the dreadful pragmatism of familial grief.' Weekend Australian
'An assured, elegiac first novel ... McFarlane gives an uncanny sense of Ruth's onset of dementia ... An exceptional debut by a writer of great talent.' West Australian
'Haunting ... When I finished the novel I was taken by [McFarlane's] skill. Now I'm mesmerised by it ... While McFarlane pulls the most stirring emotional strings with ease, she tells a poignant, unsettlingly beautiful story that still keeps me up at night.' Booktopia
'Compelling.' Vogue Australia
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A widow contends with loneliness and the subtle indignities of old age in McFarlane's rich and suspenseful debut. At 75, Ruth Field lives alone in the Australian seaside home she once shared with her husband, Harry. Hers is a structured and solitary existence, punctuated by obligatory calls from her adult sons and the occasional sounds of an imagined jungle tiger strolling through her parlor at night. One morning, the commanding Frida Young arrives, claiming to have been sent by the government as a personal aide. Ruth must adjust her once orderly routine to "Valkyric" Frida, who can "fix everything" and yet is "always wanting... without ever quite admitting it." Together the women explore the vulnerabilities of loneliness and aging, even as clues mount that Frida is not who she claims to be. In Ruth's small and tightly inhabited world, McFarlane gives a flourish to even the smallest observations: Frida exhales through her nose "with an equine vigor"; Ruth's furniture appears "almost anxious for her approval, as if... waiting for her forgiveness, dressed in its very best clothes." This book is at once a beautifully imagined portrait of isolation and an unsettling psychological thriller.
