Dear readers, I am generally a happy houseguest — maybe too intrigued by the novelty of other people’s bookshelves and breakfast rituals, their eccentric pets and unpredictable linens. What a low-stakes adventure! And what a pleasure to return eventually to one’s own little squirrel nest, with one’s own rituals and eccentricities. Of course there’s great potential for disaster in houseguesting, too. That’s where both the books in this week’s newsletter come in, though their dramatic tension leans more toward social schisms and psychological discomfort than, say, “Agatha Christie Murder Weekend.” Still, I like the window into close-quarters conflict and release that these novels provide. You might think of leaving a copy or two on the night stand in your guest room, if you have one. —Leah “Second Place,” by Rachel CuskFiction, 2021
Cusk has been well barbecued by the literary establishment for “The Book of M,” her recent pseudo-biographical novel that’s rumored to be an unauthorized (and certainly unkind) portrait of a real-life acquaintance, the actress Natalie Portman. I’ll leave that controversy for another time, though it does add some context to “Second Place,” a slim story in which an unnamed woman (later revealed only as “M”) invites a renowned painter, L, to stay in the guesthouse of her isolated coastal home. M’s motives are altruistic, to a point; she and her second husband, the rugged and taciturn Tony, built the space with the intention of welcoming artists of all stripes. But M has also fallen into a state of midlife ennui from which she believes only L — whose work greatly affected her years ago in Paris — can jolt her. Except that L turns out not to be particularly grateful for the hospitality. He brings along a gorgeous young woman and seems to avoid M at all opportunities, preferring instead to speak to her 21-year daughter, the daughter’s fussy German boyfriend and even Tony, whose earthiness he seems to find amusing. Is there anything worse than volunteering oneself as a hostess and a muse, and being rebuffed on both counts? M thinks not, and the rejection festers throughout one long, hot summer. “Second Place” is fairly eventful for Cusk, who famously does not go in for Big Plot. (The endnote acknowledges a debt to “Lorenzo in Taos,” a 1932 memoir by the American heiress Mabel Dodge Luhan about D.H. Lawrence’s fraught stay at Luhan’s home in New Mexico.) M can be wildly melodramatic and needy; her crying jags are like cloudbursts. Still, her narration comes steeped with lovely, spiraling regressions on being and nothingness: the whole human condition, in (how Cuskian!) 200 pages or less. Read if you like: small ponds, art-world gossip, manic despair. “Rental House,” by Weike WangFiction, 2024
What a summer idyll Wang’s wry dramedy of manners “Rental House” begins with: a 30-something New York couple named Keru and Nate in a gabled cottage on the Cape, devoting a full week to unhurried daytime sex, “copious amounts of gin” and walks with their oversize sheepdog, Mantou. By Page 9, the in-laws descend and the idyll ends. First come Keru’s parents, stiff-spined Chinese immigrants whose vacation parameters extend no further than the front door of a safely disinfected space; beyond that, only distress, danger and airborne pathogens lie. Their love language seems to be needling their only offspring for life choices both large (living in Manhattan, remaining childless) and small (the state of Mantou’s paws), while giving her white American husband a respectfully wide berth. The visitors’ baton passes next to Nate’s parents, who have a considerably more lax attitude toward germs; they’re proudly unvaccinated, against all pleadings from their science-professor son. (Nate, raised in their “small, one-story house with brown carpets,” was the first in his family to go college; he and Keru met as fellow outsiders at Yale.) Keru, they treat like an exotic porcupine, both tender and prickly. Mistakes are made and several small family crises survived. Then a five-year time jump drops the reader in another rental home — this time a high-end Catskills bungalow, where Keru and Nate’s attempt to bond with their flamboyant Brooklyn-via-Rotterdam neighbors proceeds, disastrously, until visiting relatives intrude again to stir up the fault lines in their marriage. Wang, whose other novels include “Chemistry” and “Joan Is Okay,” has a light, nervy style you could call high-anxiety deadpan: Nobody is really all right, and that’s … OK. Read if you like: large breed dogs, Celine Song, saving listings you’ll never book on Airbnb. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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The Book Review: 2 books about bad houseguests
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