Reading Peter Swanson’s The Christmas Guest: A Novella
© William Morrow & Company
The Christmas Guest: A Novella begins with our narrator, alone at Christmas, and remembering a Christmas from three decades ago in 1989 while reading an old diary, a significant time in her past. As soon as the diary begins, we are thrust into the world of Ashley Smith, an American art student studying at The Courtauld Institute of Art during her junior year of university–a world already vastly different from her life in Northern California.
The author, Peter Swanson (The Kind Worth Killing, Her Every Fear), a New York Times best-selling author, creates a world of mistrust and fear during a festive Christmas school break. Swanson expertly draws the reader into Ashley’s diary, allowing the reader to identify with all her insecurities, hopes, and dreams. We soon learn that Ashley is an orphan, her mother has died and she is not returning to Northern California, specifically Sacramento, to celebrate Christmas. Instead, she plans to spend the holiday break in London alone.
Her plans change when the enigmatic Emma Chapman, a wealthy student in Ashley’s class suddenly extends an invitation to stay with her family at Starvewood Hall, their ancestral Cotswold Manor House. Ashley excitedly accepts, feeling that her life has taken a turn for the better.
From the train journey forward it is hard not to be reminded of any novel of a Victorian governess journeying into a mysterious and potentially dangerous situation that she will hopefully conquer. There are so many narrative tropes that are indicators she is indeed the equivalent of a poor relation rather than an equal of Emma. Ashley is constantly a voyeur of the Chapman’s world, never quite fitting in, from her guest room in the former servants’ quarters to her lack of appropriate clothing, by her own admission, she feels she is trying to understand how to comfortably fit into Emma’s world. Ashley does not understand that she will never be a part of the aristocratic class system–not really, as she was never born into it. She is and will always be an outlier.
What gothic mystery wouldn’t be complete without a complicated love interest? Swanson embellishes his Christmas gothic tale of mystery one Adam Chapman, Emma’s handsome brother who can sometimes be aloof. Ashley is smitten and hopes to attract the elusive Adam, even if he is being questioned by the local police for the murder of a girl from the nearby village.
Ashley’s only confidant turns out to be her diary, and it is through her writing and point-of-view that this gothic tale unfolds. While Ashley functions as an investigator at times, she is also, it seems, in danger at other points in the narrative. A word of caution: if you plan on reading this novella, please do so while you have some free time as you will not be able to put it down until you finish.