The Club

In the first excerpt from the fictional magazine article discussing the tragedy, it describes the aftermath of the accident: the discovery of the car and its bodies by guests breakfasting in an underwater restaurant.

The article also contextualizes the launch of the new resort, Island Home, with some background on the Home Group, Ned Groom’s conglomerate of luxury membership clubs. Ned inherited the Home Club as a rundown hangout for aging theater professionals from his grandfather and built an empire with the aid of his younger brother, Adam. Island Home, the 12th project, was behind schedule, largely due to Ned’s perfectionism and determination to continually outdo himself.

Each chapter of the novel rotates between four different perspectives and storylines: Jess, Annie, Nikki, and Adam.

Jess

Jess is the new head of housekeeping for Island Home—a last-minute replacement for her predecessor. She has tried for years to land a job with Home Group. Adam’s rude behavior during her interview makes the news of her success come as a surprise. She arrives and tours the island, reminding herself to stick to her plan.

Annie

Annie is Home’s head of membership. While handling disappointed members who haven’t made the guest list for the launch, she ponders her own liminal status in the minds of Home’s members: a “hybrid” of fixer, employee, and friend. From a young age, Annie dreamed of a job that brought her into the orbit of famous people: “[T]he only thing she had ever really questioned was why you would not want to be surrounded by stars” (18). Ned hired her after a career in journalism failed to bring her the access that she desired. She now oversees all aspects of member relations and has a gift for spotting up-and-comers.

Annie confirms that all is prepared, including separate sleeping arrangements for guests Jackson and Georgia Crane. She anticipates the evening’s small dinner party, at which the guests will be surprised by what Ned has in store. The job can be “pretty brutal,” and Annie loves it.

Nikki

Nikki is Ned’s personal assistant (PA) and a former model. She watches Ned throw a tantrum with the design crew and reflects on his capricious nature. He can be generous but also ridiculous and casually cruel. Her own background with her mother, who had an addiction to alcohol, inured her to such displays, but she worries that Ned’s greater-than-usual volatility signals something spinning out of control.

Adam

Adam is Ned’s brother and Home’s director of special projects, an ill-defined role. His wife, Laura, has given him an ultimatum: either he leaves the job this weekend or she leaves him. Adam has been talking about quitting for the past decade. While he once loved his work—the intimacy with his brother, the hard-partying lifestyle, the proximity to celebrities—he is tired of both the life and of being overshadowed by Ned.

Adam is running late. When he finally arrives at the island, he remembers the first time that he saw it: its wild, derelict beauty. A helicopter arrives with the first of the special guests: Freddie Hunter, a late-night talk show host.

The article reflects on the immediate aftermath of the tragedy at Island Home six months earlier, particularly the intense media coverage and the attention of the “strangely unsettled, oddly excited” public (37).

The publication interviews Kyra Highway, a formerly huge British pop star and a last-minute addition to the gathering. She and her daughter spontaneously accompanied her good friend, Freddie Hunter. Kyra might once have been the type of A-list star that mandated an invitation, but her well-publicized infidelity to a superstar husband torpedoed her career. The interview ends with Kyra intimating that her daughter, Lyra, saw something relevant on the night of the deaths.

Jess

After a rushed orientation, Jess jumps into her responsibilities. Annie maneuvers Jess into babysitting Lyra, who has arrived with Freddie Hunter and his uninvited plus-one: Lyra’s mother, Kyra.

Jess knows Kyra through her work and reputation. Meeting her is “dreamlike” and exciting: “There was a strange kind of buzz in hearing your name in the mouth of someone famous” (49). Kyra goes off to her dinner, claiming that she expects to be back around 10.

Jess interacts with Lyra, who has traveled widely and stayed at Home Clubs around the world. The child confidently reviews the strengths of various locations. Lyra orders a Wagyu burger and a bottle of Badoit (an expensive mineral water) for dinner, but Jess isn’t sure about her own privileges and foregoes food. She scrambles for ways to entertain the girl, but under-18s are technically not allowed at Island Home. Failing to find age-appropriate TV fare, they watch the club’s promotional loop about its amenities. It includes an interview with Keith Little, the artist currently dining with Kyra and the other chosen few. Lyra has met Keith multiple times, but he never remembers the child’s name and always smells of cigarettes. Lyra finally drifts off to sleep around midnight.

Jess turns off the lights and snoops through Kyra’s things in the dark. She finds a huge stash of sleeping pills in a Ziplock bag and pockets about 20 pills to add to the stash that she brought with her. (It will later turn out that she intends to use them to kill Jackson Crane, the movie star who destroyed her family in a hit-and-run incident.)

Jess drops off to sleep on the couch and falls into a familiar dream, based on a memory from when she was six years old. She is in the back of a car driven by her father with her mother in the passenger seat at his side. In the dream, Jess tries to warn her parents but can’t prevent the oncoming accident. She wakes up, as she always does, at the moment when she realizes that her father is dead. Kyra stumbles in at around two o’clock in the morning, accidentally turning on all the lights in the process.

Nikki

Nikki attends the exclusive dinner party with Ned. She watches Annie play hostess in an elaborate dress that restricts her movement and seems out of place in the gathering. Ned mocks it, and Annie laughs. Nikki can tell that her feelings are hurt, though, and she reflects on the way that Annie’s outfits have continually grown more elaborate over the years until she resembles “her own drag-tribute act” (55). Nikki doesn’t like Annie, whom she finds brittle and exhausting, but she internally acknowledges that the members love her. Annie is excellent at her job, picking and catering to the elite let into Home. However, she needs to be more careful. Ned is still on edge and can never stand being upstaged.

A birthday cake is brought out for Kurt Cox, the hot young film producer. Kurt’s looks are boyish and his style is modest, but a steady string of recent successes has led him to a huge Netflix deal. Admittedly, he started his career with a leg up as the son of two Hollywood heavyweights. Nikki reflects on the way that Kurt’s mannerisms sometimes mirror those of Ron Cox, his father. Her knowledge of Ron is detailed, acquired (as later revealed) during a sexual relationship conducted while she was a minor. These days, Ron is an old man with dementia.

When asked how old he is, Kurt replies that he is 25, born on October 25, 1996. Ned tells Nikki to make a note of the date so that they can arrange a celebration next year. Shaking, Nikki does so, but she doesn’t need help remembering a date that is burned into her memory. The reason emerges gradually in the following chapters. That was the date that, at age 16, she gave birth to a son by Ron and put the child up for adoption—the child whom she now starts to suspect might be Kurt, adopted by Ron himself.

Adam

Rather than include him at dinner, Ned gives Adam an impossible job, partly as a punishment for being late. Adam meets with a group of locals on the mainland. They hate the Home Group and its effect on their once peaceful village.

They meet at the Causeway Inn, once a local pub and now a satellite of Home. The rich furnishings and subversive art neither impress the locals nor put them at ease. They are further annoyed at having to deal with Adam rather than Ned.

Adam conducts the meeting but cannot win. He feels demeaned by the job, identified as a project with no stakes that he can neither improve nor harm. He is there as a “punching bag.” Despite knowing that Ned will hate the idea, he impulsively invites everyone present to view Saturday’s fireworks from Island Home, flouting Ned’s edict that no one from the village should ever be let on the island.

At this point, someone outside the inn throws a brick through the window.

Annie

Everyone has left the dinner party except for Annie, Ned, and the key guests: Jackson, Freddie, Keith, and Kurt. Annie anticipates that Ned will make his exorbitant demands any moment now. He has spent the evening buttering his guests up, making them feel special for being singled out with invitations to this private gathering. Annie thinks about the way that celebrity is really a series of rooms blocked off by velvet ropes. People enter one room only to discover another level of access cordoned off, another level of VIP status. These people have reached the final echelon of Home.

The hour grows even later, and the guests grow tired or drunk. Some use cocaine, discreetly proffered by Annie. Keith expounds on his philosophy of art, which centers on the female form and an anonymous gaze.

One by one, Ned takes his victims off for a one-on-one talk to demand money from them. Annie notes the different reactions. Kurt is stunned, Freddie devastated, Keith furious, and Jackson haunted. Annie knows that the money demanded will be difficult for all of them and impossible for Freddie. Before they leave, Ned lets them know that they shouldn’t leave early or turn down the offer. At some point, they will each have something else delivered to their cabin. Not yet named, these deliveries will be the memory sticks loaded with video content of each recipient with which to blackmail them.