The Doubtful Guest is a short, surreal picture book written and illustrated by Edward Gorey, originally published in 1957.
A Victorian family hears a knock on the door of their mansion late one night. Going outside, they encounter a strange, penguin-like creature wearing a scarf and canvas shoes. It runs into their home and ends up staying with them, doing a variety of mischievous, strange things. By the book's end, it's been there for seventeen years and shows no intention of going away.
The book was apparently meant for children. However, the vaguely sinister feel of the story coupled with Gorey's gothic, darkness-filled drawings made Doubleday, the book's publisher, disallow him marketing it as such despite it probably being Gorey's most kid-friendly work.
This work contains examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: The creature is seen several times without its scarf, but it never takes off its white canvas shoes.
- Animalistic Abomination: There's something... not quite right about the title character.
- Breather Episode: Compared to some of Gorey's works, this book is actually pretty tame, as nobody even gets harmed in it.
- Cartoon Creature: The creature appears to be some kind of hairy penguin.
- Extreme Omnivore: The creature is shown to eat "part of the plate" at one breakfast.
- The Fair Folk: The titular creature appears out of nowhere, and is depicted wreaking havoc around the Edwardian family's household.
- Feathered Fiend: The creature is an Animalistic Abomination that looks vaguely like a penguin. Downplayed in that it's more of a nuisance than a threat, but that doesn't stop it from being creepy.
- Harmless Villain: The creature is more creepy and annoying, doing nothing worse than just stealing or breaking the family's property, than truly malicious.
- Lighter and Softer: No one dies or even gets hurt, which is unusual for what is typically expected from an Edward Gorey story.
- No-Dialogue Episode: None of the family is seen speaking and the creature apparently doesn't make noise; the entire story is told by a third-person narrator.
- No Ending: The story simply ends with no explanation of where the creature came from, what any of its strange actions meant, or when and if it'll ever leave the family's mansion.
- No Name Given: We never learn the family's names or whatever they called the creature.
- Stiff Upper Lip: The probable reason the family won't actually try to get it to leave, hoping it'll leave on its own.
- Sleepwalking: One of the creature's strange quirks:In the night through the house it would aimlessly creep, in spite of the fact of it being asleep.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: By the end of the story, the creature has been with the family for seventeen years "and... has shown no intention of going away".
- Time Skip: The last page of the book jumps forward 17 years to apparently the present day, with the creature still dwelling in the family's home.
