Review of THE GUESTS by Agnes Ravatn

 4.5 Stars

This psychological drama reminds us ““Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

Quite by chance, Karin encounters Iris Vilden, her childhood nemesis, to whom she hasn’t spoken in 25 years.  That meeting later leads to an offer for Karin and her husband Kai to spend a week in Iris’ luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords.  While there, Karin meets a neighbour, Per Sinding, and, believing she has been treated disparagingly, she implies that the holiday home belongs to her and Kai.  Then Kai joins in the charade and the lies are compounded thereby creating further problems and a domino structure of complications.

In many ways, this book is a character study of a person who is resentful and envious.  I was reminded of the words in “Desiderata” which warn “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”  Karin is very bitter.  She admits that “The dissatisfaction that comes from comparing myself with others was more my cup of tea.”  Always she feels inadequate and worthless.  Meeting Iris who is a well-known actress just increases Karin’s insecurity.  She has much for which to be grateful:  a loving and supportive husband, two children who are doing well, a house in a nice neighbourhood, and a stable job as a legal consultant for the municipal government.  But this is not enough. 

Kai is Karin’s foil.  She acknowledges, “He wasn’t prone to envy, unlike me; he didn’t instinctively compare himself with others” and “I was insecure and neurotic, Kai was calm and confident” and he “compensated for all my weaknesses.  Offset my inferiority complex with his poised sense of calm.  It’s not that Kai lacked introspection, but it never sent him into a negative spiral.”  At the holiday home, he’s happy to embrace and enjoy the opportunity, whereas Karin can’t relax because her surroundings remind her of what she doesn’t and won’t ever have. 

Karin is aware of some of her flaws, but she just doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about them.  She knows she needs to “pull myself out of this spiral, to rise above it.”  She admits to being “prone to destructive patterns of thinking at the earliest opportunity, my negative assumptions ran away with me.”  She thinks of herself as damaged, superficial, and trivial.  She even worries about negatively influencing her children, that she’d “turn them into victims of never-ending self-scrutiny, I’d infect them with my solipsism.”

Though she sometimes seems self-aware, there are times when it’s obvious that she’s not totally honest with herself.  Since Karin is the sole narrator, we are given only her perspective and I certainly had doubts about her reliability.  For instance, she describes what happened when she and Iris were in school together.  Though Iris behaved appallingly if Karin’s version is accurate, it is Karin’s reaction that seems extreme and irrational.  Later, when she learned Iris lived two blocks away, Karin moved!  And she blames Iris for her own underachievement:  “I could have been someone else, I thought to myself, if it hadn’t been for Iris holding me back, or worse:   causing me to hold myself back.”  She has such an obsessive hatred for someone she hasn’t seen in 25 years?  As I read, I kept wishing Karin had taken to heart the words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus who said, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

Karin is also implacably judgmental of anyone who seems to have a better life than she does.  Of course she questions Iris’ motives in giving them a week’s retreat:  is she just showing off or trying to humiliate Karin or “To make sure my holiday is spent in the maximum amount of misery”?  She assumes there is an ulterior motive.  A statement by Per has Karin jumping to the conclusion that she has been “well and truly dismissed” instead of thinking that maybe  what he says is “a straightforward statement, not an attempt to strip me of my humanity.”  She asks Hilma Ekhult, Kai's wife, "purposely puerile questions," but then judges her for her "condescending and terse responses"?  Eventually Karin even starts to question Kai’s motives.  Ironically, she sees others as judgmental when she herself is.  Isn’t this called projection?

Though this is not a conventional suspense novel, there is a lot of tension.  The book is an uncomfortable read; I kept silently screaming at her to just tell the truth.  The false reality that she and Kai create is not sustainable so tension ramps up.  It’s only a matter of time before the dominoes will come crashing down. 

Besides being angry and frustrated with her, I also felt so sad for Karin.  She is a lawyer, apparently good at her job, and Kai is a master carpenter.  Because of their knowledge and skills, both are able to help Kai and Hilma.  Karin has so much, but she doesn’t appreciate her blessings and so can’t be happy.  Because of her deceptions, Karin deprives herself of an honest conversation with Hilma, her favourite author.  She and Hilma even have similar opinions about the property search engine developed by Iris’ husband, so the two could well have become friends. 

This book is brief, really more a novella, but it is dense and powerful.  I could go on and on because there is so much to analyze and admire.  The author has an insightful understanding of human psychology.  I was left in awe, and I think others will be too.

I’ve read Ravatn’s previous novels, The Bird Tribunal (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/02/review-of-bird-tribunal-by-agnes-ravatn.html) and The Seven Doors (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2021/07/review-of-seven-doors-by-agnes-ravatn.html), and I highly recommend these as well.