NW

The second half of “Guest” seems almost an inverse of the first: Instead of offering a rosy depiction of Felix’s ambitions and life with Grace, the section shows his darker side. Annie is a link to Felix’s past drug use and failure to find direction in life. This is underscored in the brief rekindling of Felix’s and Annie’s romance when they have sex. It suggests a relationship that is fleeting and volatile, in contrast to the domestic stability he treasures with Grace. NW also makes this contrast clear in its references to space and material objects. In the opening pages of “Guest,” Felix helps Grace retrieve a mermaid figurine that has fallen behind their bed, one of many (presumably Disney) figurines that Grace collects. The sunny optimism represented by the figurines is markedly different from the junk covering the residences of Lloyd and Annie, emphasizing the contrast between Felix’s present and past. While Felix’s visit to Lloyd builds bridges to his past (through a perusal of the Garvey House book), his motivation for visiting Annie is to say a final goodbye to the undesirable parts of his past—“demons,” as he calls them—that she represents.

The impact of Felix’s desire to get ahead in life, including his recovery from addiction, is most drastically indicated in his interactions with Annie. However, she is no simple representation of the London underbelly that Felix now wants to distance himself from. While some characters in NW have lives that are ostensibly successful and well put together but belie humble or dark pasts, Annie’s is the opposite: She and her apartment appear decrepit and low-class, but her roots are high-class. As she mentions, she is related to an earl who owns the building she lives in as well as others that surround it. In its own way, this information signals a message that runs throughout NW: Urban life is not always what it appears to be. 

Annie is markedly distinct from almost every other character in NW. While for Leah, Natalie, Michel, and many others, the clash between the material/social/economic aspects of urban life and the more existential ones causes anxiety, depression, and insecurity, Annie remains content with her life choices and the “river of fire” she lives in (185). Annie’s jabs at the bourgeois couple on the rooftop across the street from her flat are not simply a reflection of her choice to lead a very different kind of life. Instead, they raise serious questions about Felix and Grace’s own domestic ambitions. Annie is not afraid to take these questions to Felix directly, mocking his “pathological need […] to be the good guy” (186). Clues about Annie’s own history and complexity invite Felix to confront the purpose he has laid out for himself in a very serious way.

Having already shown that the domestic life of at least two other representative Londoners—Leah and Michel—is far from bliss, NW presents these questions more broadly in “Guest.” If Leah and Michel seemingly have all the right pieces in place yet happiness and purpose elude them, then it is unclear whether Annie or others are more authentic and true. Ultimately, all characters in NW struggle in some way or another to define purpose, meaning, and life trajectory in the complex and chaotic world of contemporary London. 

After defining Felix as a person with a full and rich story, “Guest” closes with the shock of his murder. As in “Visitation,” the act of violence happens on the streets of London, rather than in its private, domestic spaces, as if to bring the turmoil of life hidden beneath the cosmopolitan, urban veneer fully out into the open. The impact of the event is exacerbated by the fact that the newly liberated Felix happily declares himself in love to friends he passes just before being stabbed. The violent act echoes the attack on Leah, Michel, and Olive in “Visitation.” It is also the link that joins the disparate strands of NW together by the novel’s end, when Natalie and Leah realize they suspect who committed the murder: Nathan Bogle.

After the shock of the stabbing, “Guest” ends abruptly, with Felix taking his final breaths, watching Grace get on a bus and depart their neighborhood—and symbolically, the violence and drama it represents. “Guest” sheds the literary experimentalism of the other sections of NW. It is essentially a self-contained and straightforward narrative, yet it contributes to a key aspect of the novel. By humanizing Felix, it gives the more extended stories of Leah and Natalie more depth. The links between the characters and parts show that their conflicts are not isolated but instead part of the broader fabric of contemporary London life.