The Guest Room

May 1, 2023
Grief complicates everything for the protagonist of this psychological thriller. Tess, still wracked with grief over the recent unsolved murder of her sister, Rosie, moves into Rosie's apartment and starts renting her sister's old room for short-term stays when she realizes she'll need help paying the mortgage. As Tess becomes more isolated from the people and activities of her old life, she develops an increasing compulsion to snoop through her guests' possessions. The arrival of Arran, an enigmatic (and nice-looking) longer-term boarder, adds fuel to the already raging fire of Tess' jumbled emotions and thoughts about Rosie's death. Stymied in her efforts to find out who killed Rosie and why, Tess continues her risky nighttime solo forays into parks in order to root out predators as well as her closer-to-home explorations of duffel bags and backpacks in the guest room. Tess' discovery of Arran's diary--which contains entries that might signal an obsession with Tess herself--leads her to follow Arran (and others) all over London in a series of surveillance missions driven more by passion than reason. Tess' desperation to achieve some sort of understanding of the circumstances of Rosie's death drives her to suspect more than one character (while failing to consider some others). Sylva skillfully illustrates an unmoored character completely consumed by a spiraling, unrelenting grief in a setting where others continue their lives as usual. Moody and proceeding at a measured pace, Tess' narrative slowly unfolds toward a cinematic resolution. Interspersed with passages from Arran's diary entries as well as anonymous text of a more ominous nature, Tess' story elucidates the fog of grief as well as the tendency of the human heart to see what it wants to see. A slow burn of a psychological thriller wrapped up in mysterious ambiguity.

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