JP POMARE The Last Guests. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
The new thriller from the award-winning author of Call Me Evie and In the Clearing has a disturbing premise.
New Zealand writer JP Pomare opens his sinister thriller setting a scene as though it were a movie set — which it will be, shortly. The Auckland residence entered by the intruder, the ‘planter’, could be any serviced apartment, ‘Open plan, as sterile and neat as a hotel room … Framed Ikea prints. A boxy couch that looks like it belongs in a furniture showroom. A beige rug.’ In meticulous prose, we see a man installing cameras. Stealthily, his tradecraft shows the reader how and where they are. We are complicit.
His eyes roam the walls and the ceiling, his gaze coming to rest on the black pendant light fitting hanging down. Lights are good; people tend not to stare directly at them.
This seems to be about voyeurism, about making some form of sex video, but although this is certainly key, the premise of the subterfuge is broader.
Pomare is writing about the human desire to watch other people — to watch them eat, play, cook, fight, a narcissistic curiosity about ordinary behaviour. When Big Brother appeared over 20 years ago, it was the beginning of a steady supply of programs feeding this very urge. The difference here is that the people being filmed are unaware of it, their behaviour unfiltered by expectations or norms. It is truly a ‘peephole’, as the streaming service supplying the video footage is named.
From security cameras watching from every street corner, to police detectors picking up a hand-held mobile in a car, we have become accustomed to routine invasions of our privacy. If you’re not doing anything bad, you’ve nothing to worry about. Lina looks up a profile on LinkedIn, something we’ve all done, but could it be a slippery slope to stalking? Is this ‘acceptable’ surveillance? Where is the line drawn? Secret livestreams for the viewing pleasure of a private audience of subscribers may be that line.
We meet the couple, Cain and Lina. He’s an army veteran, his PTSD evident in addictions and edginess, and his inability to find steady work. Lina, an ambulance officer, is trying to keep him together, looking for the man she fell for before his tour of Afghanistan. They are scarred also from recently losing a baby, something Lina feels is her fault. She’s meeting a man through an online dating app and, while we know the marriage is at a tipping point, we don’t understand her motive until much later. The anonymity of her hook-up’s place, booked through WeStay, an Airbnb-like arrangement, is eerily familiar. Though uneven in places, The Last Guests accelerates from this point.
Between chapters, Pomare gives us a taste of what the anonymous Peephole subscribers are doing.
Peephole
Live Cam Premium
Stream 029A
Viewers: 052
GeneralMayhem: ‘Oh yes! We have action on Cam 1. Clearly their first time together.’
The channel posts updates to new services on offer, always ending with ‘Please enjoy the show’, and advises of service disruptions when authorities close in. And closing in they are.
Encouraged by friends to place a weekender they own at Lake Tarawera on the WeStay site, Lina and Cain go down to the old house to clean it up. There is a universality to the urban settings but Pomare describes the New Zealand landscape beautifully: ‘the air has such a distinct feel in your mouth, clean and wet. Like a palate cleanser.’ But Lina hasn’t left the city behind and when an intruder breaks in, she is forced into action to defend herself and Cain. With livestream commentary as it happens, the couple seem to have become participants in their own snuff film.
CallMeDaddy: This is the best stream I’ve watched on here. Incredible.
Silvesterthekitten: I don’t know about this at all. It’s not what I signed up for, but I can’t look away.
Neither they, nor we, know who has seen it, or what exactly they have seen, but Lina gradually becomes aware that the people closest to her might be involved.
We are left with the overwhelming sense that we all have something to hide; few of us are innocent. And there is a tease in the title: are the ‘last guests’ just the most recent, or is Pomare pointing to some other finality?
JP Pomare The Last Guests Hachette 2021 PB 336pp $32.99
Jessica Stewart is a freelance writer and editor. She can be found at www.yourseconddraft.com where she writes about editing, vagaries of the English language and books she’s loved.
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