The Guest Book, a Bestselling Generational Saga, Deserves to Belong on Bookshelves Everywhere
The Guest Book, written by Sarah Blake and published by Flatiron Books, is a riveting generational saga about the nature of love, racism, and the perception of family values. Parts of the novel follow Ogden and Kitty Milton, a young couple who find their relationship tested against the backdrop of World War II. Others show the lives of their children; the lives of their sons, Edward, who died as a child, and Moss, whose controversial friendship tested the strength of family bonds, are central to the plot. It also shows the lives of their daughters, Joan and Evelyn, and how their relationship changes and evolves. The last subject of the novel is Evie, Joan’s daughter, whose marriage to Paul Schlesinger, a Jewish man, unravels because of her grandfather’s business dealings fifty years prior.
Blake uses the form of a guest book -- one Kitty purchases when the Miltons purchase a small island off the coast of Maine -- to chronicle the events of three generations. Blake deftly leaps across space and time, masterfully showing changes in values and relationships within a family. Using different entries in the book, she creates subplots featuring Odgen and Kitty’s children and grandchildren. Blake utilizes foreshadowing to reference deaths, births, and other monumental events before they happen. She uses small narratives to explain them afterward. This symbolism and foreshadowing give the novel an added dimension of suspense and mystery.
Blake is a master storyteller, specifically in using dialogue to illustrate relationships. She shows discord in two marriages, Ogden and Kitty’s and Evie and Paul’s, realistically encapsulating the human tendency for error. The characters in the novel experience discord in and mend their relationships, as real humans do. She also shows struggles in power dynamics between characters, through Kitty and Joan and Evie and her son. Her use of relationships to further the plot makes the book seem real and believable. The author’s willingness to show arguments and financial difficulties adds to this, which is common in reality but rare in literature. With her use of language and descriptions of social norms, Blake also transports the reader into whatever setting the novel is describing, whether it is post-World War II New York, or a festive 1950s island retreat.
The Guest Book does not shy away from showing discrepancies in society, either. The difference in opportunities whether someone is rich or poor, old money or new money, black or white, Christian or Jewish, is obvious throughout the novel. The Milton children have opportunities that their friends don’t, by nature of being white, old-money Protestants from the Upper East Side. As the children begin to realize this, Blake turns parts of the novel into a bildungsroman: a coming-of-age story that showcases the struggle of growing up and discovering your identity and place in the world. Her description of real, human experiences makes the novel a plausible and convincing story.
At the novel's end, the characters have a happy ending, despite many events that probably would have produced negative results in reality. Small details can make a novel less realistic, and some of those details in The Guest Book slipped Blake and her editor’s notice.
Despite this single drawback, the book is masterful. Blake simultaneously binds the family together and tears them apart through the discovery and concealment of family secrets, leaving the reader captivated and enthralled from start to finish. She creates catalysts for change but restricts them from the reader’s view until necessary, giving an otherwise benign book a suspenseful undertone. Her use of realistic elements and plausible events, including difficult topics such as racism, give The Guest Book a captivating and thrilling undertone, making it a pleasure to read.
