The Guest Room

by Chris Bohjalian

From the New York Times bestselling 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.

• ISBN13: 9780385538893
• Publish Date: 5 January 2016
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 7 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Doubleday & Co Inc.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

In The Guest Room, Richard Chapman is just trying to be a good best man when he agrees to host his little brother Phillip's bachelor party at his home. He sends his wife and young daughter away for the weekend, expecting the usual kind of bachelor deal: drinking, carousing, maybe strippers. What he gets are two young Eastern European women in his living room that are clearly more than "just" strippers: they're prostitutes. What he doesn't realize until much later is that they aren't "just" prostitutes, but women who are being trafficked for sex. After he comes close to but ultimately stops himself from sleeping with one of them, his entire world is turned upside down when they violently kill their "bodyguards" and take off. The story splits and follows two tracks: what happens with Richard as the ramifications of that night spiral out of control in both his personal and professional lives, and the story of Alexandra, the girl Richard almost slept with, both before and after that night.

While author Chris Bohjalian does a great job of making Richard a sympathetic character, using him as a lens to show how even fundamentally decent men participate in and perpetuate a culture that treats women as commodities, Alexandra's is the more dynamic story. An aspiring ballerina in Armenia, she is lured away from home after both her parents die by her mother's former employer with promises of dance training and a career. Once she's taken, the 15 year-old is repeatedly raped, groomed to become a high-class call girl over the course of a few years in Russia, and then comes to the US, where the bachelor party is among her first assignments.

There's a distaste, if not recoil, by "normal" people when they think about the idea of a woman having sex for money. What kind of person would consider something like that? Why on earth? I was among them, but over the past couple years, I've been reading Maggie McNeill's excellent blog, and I've come to understand that plenty of women willingly chose the sex trade for lots of perfectly understandable reasons. While sex slavery does exist, it's MUCH less prevalent than most people would believe. So while the story told by Alexandra might be true for some small number of women, your average escort has a much more prosaic background. And while I think Bohjalian chooses to make her story dramatic for the purpose of impact, it still perpetuates a mythology that a lot of people cling to which is ultimately harmful for sex workers.

As I whole, I found the book decent but not great and ultimately forgettable. There's a good amount of suspense built in Richard's storyline, wondering how things are going to play out for him, and even more in Alexandra's storyline once it gets to the "after the murder" part. But the ending felt...undercooked, for lack of a better way to describe it. It seemed like Bohjalian wrote himself into a corner and kind of flailed his way out of it. On a final, nitpicky note, I've never had to Google as many words in the course of one book as I did with this one. I think of myself as having a pretty extensive vocabulary, but there were many words I'd never encountered before. Which is great on one level, because I'm always down to add a new word to my trove. But it struck me as a little pretentious, since most of those words were used when a simpler, more accessible one would have been perfectly appropriate.

[kimbacaffeinate]

Richard Chapman lives in the suburbs of Westchester, NY with his wife and their daughter. There life is one I could readily identify with. They are content, happy and enjoying a quiet life where Wednesday night's highlight is popcorn and a Disney movie in their den. Bohjalian begins the story with Richard’s perspective as we learn about the events that unfolded the night of the murders. It was captivating and felt realistic despite the night of debauchery.

The bachelor party is for Richard’s younger, wilder, snot of brother. Be warned, you will quickly draw lines in the sand defining characters you like, can forgive and those you want to back over with your truck. Bohjalian will have you understanding these characters, their flaws and their struggles. He makes you sympathize, forgive and question all while loathing others.
The night’s entertainment was two strippers accompanied by their Russian bodyguards. Things quickly get out of hand, but nothing prepares them for the girls stabbing and killing their bodyguards. The author bought the scenes to life vividly without making me squeamish. While mistakes were made and lines were crossed, nothing felt farfetched, and he was able to make their actions feel genuine.

As we meet the girls, the author introduces us to the voice of Alexandra, a dark-haired Russian beauty who as a child dreamed of being a prima ballerina. Through her voice, we learn about human trafficking. I thought the author did a wonderful job of sharing her psyche and allowing us entry into this seedy world. It was chilling, dark and disturbing. I connected and felt for Alexandra and her young friends. Now every time I see a spam mail for Russian girls my heart skips a beat.

The story is told from several perspectives, and broken into chapters. Those of Richard and Alexandra are the most prevalent, but we also get the voice of Richard’s wife and his young daughter. The Guest Room shares the consequences of that fateful night. It was captivating, felt realistic and would translate brilliantly for film.

Copy provided by publisher. This review was originally posted on Caffeinated Book Reviewer