The novel in the Berger canon which The Houseguest most resembles is Neighbors, both in its concern for America's obsession with bad manners and in the gradual development of a highly surrealistic situation. The Hottseguest provides credible motivations for its characters and returns to the credibility of realism at its conclusion, while Neighbors is an absurdist morality play on a high literary level.

Characterizations in The Houseguest also recall other Berger novels. Doug Graves is a more memorable version of Blaine Raven, Carlo Reinhart's snobbish, drunken, womanizing father-in-law. Audrey is reminiscent of Naomi, the long-suffering mother in Sneaky People (1975), who secredy writes pornography in order to forget her philandering husband. Lydia, the most likable character in the novel, has the moral sensibility of Carlo Reinhart of the Reinhart series.

Chuck Burgoyne, whose rudeness motivates the action, appears to have no exact prototype in Berger's canon, but...