5-Page Book Club: The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Reversals and ironic contrasts
Welcome to 5-Page Book Club, in which we read five pages of a novel to see what we can learn as writers. Free subscribers get a preview, while paid subscribers can read the entire post. Click the play button above to listen to the audio version of this post.
You can read the first five pages of The Guest List by Lucy Foley for free here. (Click the link, then click the Look Inside button.)
Encapsulating The Premise In A Single Scene
You’re invited to a wedding… on a tiny, storm-tossed island… where someone will die.
What reader can resist such an invitation? Just in case any skepticism remains over whether The Guest List will be fun to read, the first two pages present all the important elements of the novel’s premise. Not only that, but this opening scene presents a reversal that promises the story will be full of twists. Let’s dive in!
The lights go out. In an instant, everything is in darkness.
The scene starts with a frightening moment: the guests are trapped in darkness in the midst of a storm. Of course, a power outage isn’t really dangerous, but the prose hints at the violence that will come later in the story. The description of the storm includes words like batters, assault, and fury.
Finally, the bulbs flicker back on.
The middle of the scene gives us a reprieve from tension. The guests are “embarrassed now about how the lights find them: crouched as though ready to fend off an attack.” But they “laugh it off.” A moment of relief for the guests and the reader.
But the descriptions of the party scene remain unsettling: “clots of wine” on the floor and a “crimson stain” on the table linens put the reader in mind of blood. Very out of place at a wedding party! Plus, the reader is told that no boats can approach the island until the storm calms, which means the guests are trapped here.
The most unsettling moment of the opening scene is the description of the wedding cake, which seems to serve as a stand-in for the bride herself: