41 pages • 1 hour read
Megan MirandaThe Last House Guest
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Setting
Setting refers to both a story’s geographic location and the time period in which it takes place. The events of The Last House Guest chronologically occur between 2017 and 2019, but the narration recalls older memories from before the plot’s inciting incident. The story takes place in Littleport, Maine, a fictional town surrounded by woods, mountains, and the sea. Avery calls the landscape a “drowned coast” due to “fingers of land rising from the ocean” and “islands appearing and vanishing in the distance with the tide” (4). The town’s location is rife with natural dangers, from the bluffs overlooking the coast to the winding mountain road that provides the only access to the outside world. Littleport is isolated by its environment, and its appeal as a vacation spot is that nothing bad is supposed to happen there unless it is a tragic accident. The abundance of natural dangers creates a false sense of security in many interpersonal relationships—people expect threats from the climate, not from their neighbors. The revelation of a crime then disrupts the façade and reveals something troubling beneath the surface. When Sadie takes in the view, however, she does not see a myriad threatening forces but an unexplored world full of potential lives she wishes she could live.
Genre: Mystery
In a mystery novel, the inciting incident is a crime, typically a murder, and the story develops as a response to that crime and the protagonist’s efforts to solve it. Ultimately, whatever the crime, the unifying thread between all the villains in the story is their shared participation in deceit. Mysteries typically have the same main features: a crime, a protagonist with a strong sense of justice, an unknown perpetrator, a series of clues and false suspects, and the inevitable identification of the real suspect. What sets The Last House Guest apart from more stereotypical mystery novels is the dynamic between its protagonist and antagonist. Avery is not an investigator by trade, but she possesses a strong sense of empathy and a devotion to her friend and to the truth. Detective Collins is not a masked man down a dark alley; he hides in plain sight as someone Avery trusts. Avery is the “good guy” with a dark past, while Collins is the “bad guy” with a pristine public image. As a villain, Collins tests Avery’s courage and pushes her to risk her own safety in the name of justice for Sadie. Every piece of evidence she uncovers can be spun to incriminate her instead, but Avery does not hide her findings to keep herself safe. As she sifts what is true from what is untrue, Avery’s investigation forces her to confront her own oversights and biases, spurring her on a compelling personal journey.
Red Herrings
In literature, especially mysteries, a red herring is a false clue or clue trail. The break-ins, power outages, and gas leaks in the Lomans’ rental properties around Littleport function as classic red herrings. These events distract Avery from the true villain and pull the reader down the same path. However, this diversion is not without purpose. Though the break-ins do nothing to reveal Collins as the murderer, they do highlight the consequences of the Lomans’ presence in the town, painting them as somewhat villainous too. Their monopoly on the town’s hospitality industry inflates local housing prices and also pushes local family establishments out of business. Faith’s role in the break-ins forces Avery to confront that part of her past (namely her involvement with Loman family), as she cannot move forward without coming to terms with who she used to be or reconciling with the people she hurt.
Flashbacks
A flashback, or an analepsis, is when the narration leaves the present day to revisit a scene from the past, usually through a memory or a dream. A flashback provides additional information to contextualize the current events or a character’s present behavior. As the novel is narrated from Avery’s point of view, the reader’s access to the past is limited to the memories Avery is able to recall. In narrative theory, there are two layers to a novel: the story (what is told) and the discourse (how it is told). Therefore, there are also two main modes of time: the story time (the order of events as they happen chronologically) and the discourse time (the order of events as they are conveyed to the reader). If the discourse encompasses flashbacks, the author includes them to ensure the reader receives information only at the moments when it will be most impactful. For example, the reader learns of Avery and Connor’s tryst at the Plus-One Party in a flashback that occurs long after Avery told people in the present that she and Connor were not even speaking at the time. Such a revelation may make the reader feel Avery is an unreliable narrator, since she did not reveal the truth sooner, not even in her private thoughts.
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By Megan Miranda
