INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER • NPR • TIME • THE WASHINGTON POST • ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • AND MORE!“The perfect novel … Freshly mysterious.” —The Washington PostFrom the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and … 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.
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 new novel, Sea of Tranquility, coming in April 2022!
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As a huge fan of Station Eleven I was both excited and a bit nervous to get my hands on a copy of Mandel’s follow-up — and while the mood is very different, the story is just as worthwhile. Mandel’s elliptical, meandering chorus of voices means you never know quite where the story is going to lead, but the journey is the point, and the same tale told in a more straightforward way would miss so much. Gorgeous on audio.
Where to begin? First and foremost, the writing is exquisite and a delight to read. The many characters featured are interesting and fleshed out. However, I found their criss-crossing storylines and time jumps a tad puzzling and in the end this story of loss, regret and “what ifs” felt slightly pointless with an ending that was a bit anticlimactic.
After re-reading Station Eleven, I was eager to read what is in essence a requel—but in truth it’s so much more. The glass hotel in question is an extravagant palace accessible only by boat on northern Vancouver Island, and it’s inhabited by the kind of characters we’ve come to expect from this author. Settling over everyone is the incipient financial crisis that has actually turned all the people into ghosts and the events into hauntings.
The language is clever, as always: Vincent lives in a town with “one road and two dead ends;” and “we had crossed a line, that much was obvious, but it was difficult to say later exactly where that line had been.”
Not a book for the faint of heart; just as we could find ourselves in Station Eleven, so too can we see our own times in The Glass Hotel. But it should be required reading for the thoughtful.
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel was just as epic and all-consuming as I was hoping it would be. After reading and loving Station Eleven, I had high expectations for this novel and it definitely lived up to them for me!
“Why don’t you swallow broken glass”
The audio version of The Glass Hotel was fantastic, and I listened to the majority of the book before switching to the physical copy for about the last 70 pages. This author clearly knows what she’s good at, and this is emphasized by how much The Glass Hotel resembles Station Eleven. The writing style and format were very similar, but this deals with an entirely different subject matter and isn’t dystopian, although some of it is set in the future.
I was fascinated by the Ponzi scheme aspect of this novel and how it effects people. In my mind, this book was very reminiscent of the movie Wolf of Wall Street which is a movie I really enjoyed. I know absolutely nothing about finance, but it was still interesting for me, and that probably has a lot do with the writing and how everything is tied together.
I thought The Glass Hotel had a relatively slow start, but I think slow and steady is the way for this one and it’s a book you will want to savor. The characters are multi-dimensional and highly flawed, and they were honestly very interesting. My favorite character was by far Vincent, and I loved her bluntness and brains.
Lyrical and atmospheric are just 2 words I would use to describe The Glass Hotel. I think if you liked Station Eleven that you would like this book as well, and I seriously need to focus on this author’s backlist now!
Thank you to Libro.fm and the publisher for my advance listening copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Really 4.5 stars. This story is rich, convoluted, and truly enjoyable and compelling. The author’s writing is unique, but readable, although other-worldly at times. The characters are real, multi-layered, and interesting. If you’re not interested in ponzi schemes, like I wasn’t, don’t let that stop you. I found myself intrigued with the emotional impact of the characters. At times the narrative jumps around too much, but otherwise, a deep, fascinating story. Highly recommend!
I just finished (and loved) Emily St. John Mandel’s THE GLASS HOTEL – beautifully written, thought-provoking, unique real characters, and an interesting plot. Reading the last 50 pages or so, I really felt as if I was in the hands of a master.
See full review on BookTrib: https://booktrib.com/2020/03/the-glass-hotel-a-multi-faceted-story-told-through-a-prism-of-characters/
Not my favorite. Couldn’t get attached to the characters
Tragic, imaginative, and atmospheric!
The Glass Hotel is an alluring, character-driven tale that immerses you into the lives of multiple strangers as their worlds quickly unravel, intersect, collide, and are ultimately ruined when a Ponzi scheme catastrophically collapses.
The prose is rich and lyrical. The characters are lonely, complex, and vulnerable. And the plot told from multiple perspectives using flashbacks and alternate realities is a hauntingly sobering tale of tragedy, crime, corruption, heartbreak, manipulation, disillusionment, morality, and the true weight of a guilty conscience.
Overall, The Glass Hotel is an evocative, pensive, unique page-turner with a supernatural thread that does a beautiful job of reminding us that the choices we make often have far-reaching consequences and that life rarely unfolds as we expect it to.