The Glass Hotel: A novel
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events--the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. "The perfect novel ... Freshly mysterious." --The Washington Post Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don't you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call. In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives. Look for Emily St. John Mandel's bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
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Community Reviews
“The Glass Hotel” is another brilliant journey through the human experience by Emily St. John Mandel. Her style and the voice she gives her characters is so distinguishable from others. In this novel we get more of that meta analysis on the human condition, specifically on what it means to find one’s purpose in life. What’s different in this book is the timeline and setting. Grounded and in the present compared to her other future-scape novels.
The contemporary backdrop makes this book even more personable and challenges your understanding of self accountability. The cadre of players across the chapters have their unique personal baggage and their moral inconsistencies. St. John Mandel, however, does not make it easy to judge them blindly. We are in their lived experience and in their struggles completely. All thanks to the careful framing and character development she meters out over the pages.
What really moves me about this book and other St. John Mandel works is that her novels capture the stories of relationships against the bleakest of settings. The Glass Hotel in particular takes us through a deeply human problem. Specifically, the nuanced sequence of events that precedes us making decisions that leave us in a state of moral compromise. What follows is the guilt and isolation from wrestling with that pain. A great read and highly recommended.
Fans of Mandel's Station Eleven are right to be excited about her latest book, but should be warned that this book is very, very different. The book opens with a drowning, told in almost movie-like flashes of Vincent's physical and mental experiences as she drowns. I found myself returning to these first few pages repeatedly throughout the book as more and more of Vincent's life leading up to her drowning is revealed. So, nominally, this book is an answer to the question of why Vincent was drowning? Was she pushed (murdered), and if so by whom? Or did she fall? And what was she doing there in the first place?
Really, though, this book is about far more than that. Reading Vincent's story takes us to a remote corner of Canada (home of the eponymous glass hotel), the inside of a Ponzi scheme, and, as a direct consequence, jail. Each setting, each character is rendered almost like a fine painting, with depths and shadows you don't notice at first glance.
The narrative jumps around a bit, from character to character and back and forth in time, and it's not always clear where or when you are, but it works, if you go with the flow. Mandel is a powerful and flexible writer, has more than enough ability to pull off a very different kind of book than Station Eleven (although I wouldn't say no to a sequel!). Station Eleven may have put her firmly on the literary map, but The Glass Hotel makes clear that she is not going to bound by any one genre. I wonder which one she'll choose next.
Really, though, this book is about far more than that. Reading Vincent's story takes us to a remote corner of Canada (home of the eponymous glass hotel), the inside of a Ponzi scheme, and, as a direct consequence, jail. Each setting, each character is rendered almost like a fine painting, with depths and shadows you don't notice at first glance.
The narrative jumps around a bit, from character to character and back and forth in time, and it's not always clear where or when you are, but it works, if you go with the flow. Mandel is a powerful and flexible writer, has more than enough ability to pull off a very different kind of book than Station Eleven (although I wouldn't say no to a sequel!). Station Eleven may have put her firmly on the literary map, but The Glass Hotel makes clear that she is not going to bound by any one genre. I wonder which one she'll choose next.
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