The Glass Hotel

Ethereal and addictive – I’d no sooner open the cover of my kobo than I’d get swept up into this hauntingly dreamlike story. There’s no point in saying what it’s about because that's not what matters. It’s the timing of how events unfold and the way elements are revealed that gives this its intensity and depth. It revisits key scenes from different characters' perspectives and from after and then before, building a timeline that twists and intertwines with itself until it returns to the beginning. In its own way it’s every bit as astonishing as Mandel’s earlier (and somewhat prophetic) book, Station Eleven.

Been up since 6am reading this and it was exceptionally good - I think I may have preferred it to Station Eleven, which I unabashedly loved. It's unbearably beautiful and unbearably sad, dealing as it does with boundaries - the worlds of the rich and the poor and insecure, the living and the dead, reality and dreams, the imprisoned and the free.

I don't want to say too much without spoiling it, but at its heart it's a mystery - what happened to Vincent? The answer to that question is a huge story of crisis, despair, and international billion dollar fraud that criss-crosses back and forth along different timelines and from the perspective of a host of well-drawn characters. The subject matter is something that I would never normally be show more interested in, as the romance of high finance has always left me cold, but everything is told from a heartbreakingly human perspective - despite the fact that in many ways this is a ghost story.

Can't recommend it enough. show less

Emily St. John Mandel is an author whose name has been coming up regularly on ‘to read during a pandemic’ lists because of Station Eleven, which is about a flu pandemic. Now I’m too chicken to read this at the moment, so I chose her most recent novel instead. Once this pandemic is over though, I’ll be heading straight for Station Eleven because wow, what an author Mandel is! She has that rare ability to make literary fiction read like a thriller, no matter what the topic.

The Glass Hotel is about a number of different things- loss, addiction, a Ponzi scheme, gaol and shipping. You might think that you really don’t care to read about the shadiness of the finance market or container ships, but trust me – you do. Mandel could show more take any topic and make it fascinating. She also has the rare ability of bringing together a number of disparate characters and making the reader care for them, and what happens to them. A rich man in a hotel bar with money to invest? You’ll be concerned for him when he’s living in an RV trying to make ends meet working in an online retailer warehouse. The man who owns the hotel and a lot of money belonging to other people? You’ll share his concerns when he thinks he is losing his mind.

It’s difficult to explain the plot of The Glass Hotel without spoilers or making it seem too separate. But think of it as the story of a number of people who are in a beautiful, remote hotel one night when something shocking happens. Little do each of them know what is going to happen to them in the future, but it will all be wildly different from what they expect. None will continue on that same path and for some, the journey will be wildly different. The characters are interlinked, but the hotel is the setting where they all come together for the first (and possibly the last time). The plot is magnificent, giving each character deep details into their life, thoughts and concerns. No one is unlikeable, but all have their own flaws (even though some choose not to recognise them). The plot seems as though it is shrouded in mist, as everything has a slight other-worldly feeling about it. It creates a mesmerising effect and I dare any reader not to become absorbed by this novel, wondering what will happen and how each of the characters will be affected. My only complaint is that the graffiti scrawled at the hotel didn’t seem to warrant the shocked reaction from the characters (it’s not obscene or targeting), but be patient and all will be revealed.

Even though it contains no mention of a pandemic, it’s the kind of story you want to read during one because it moves the reader’s focus solely to the book. Beautiful and absorbing, read it even if you have no interest in finance or shipping.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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[Station Eleven] didn't sustain my interest but this one, loosely based on the Bernie Madoff case, did. There's an ethereal chaos to the narrative structure of the book that evokes the character's lives and plights. Ultimately, it's a sad book, as the characters never seem to pull themselves out of the morass of their own choices. But the possibility keeps you reading. Elegiac and consuming.

At the center of this novel is Jonathan Alkaitis, a Bernie Madoff-type figure whose massive ponzi scheme is, we know as soon as we meet him, about to collapse and land him in prison. Although his centrality is not at all obvious at first, as the story starts somewhere else entirely, with someone who sure looks like he's going to be the main character but then mostly fades out of the narrative for a very long while. The whole thing, really, is structured like this. Changes of POV, jumping back and forth in time, characters who weave in and out of each other's lives in chaotic and often glancing ways. Even having read Station Eleven, where the author does something very similar and pulls it off amazingly well, I find myself thinking that show more this structure should not work. It should feel disjointed, unsatisfying, perhaps even confusing. And yet, it reads absolutely smoothly and it all comes together into something I found really compelling and strangely beautiful, with characters I completely believed in and some quietly complex themes. It's kind of amazing. show less

Emily St. John Mandel's 2020 novel “The Glass Hotel” is a bit hard to peg. It covers a lot of years in relatively few pages. There are numerous characters. It is about a Ponzi scheme, yet it is also a ghost story

All this adds to the novel's charm.

The hotel of the title is where the novel begins and where it ends. Hotel Caiette is isolated on Vancouver Island, accessible only by boat. Only rich people stay there. Only those who prefer isolation can work there.

Early on Jonathan Alkaitis, a wealthy investor, meets Vincent, the bartender. Despite the misleading name, Vincent is actually a beautiful young woman. Alkaitis quickly makes her his pretend wife, never a replacement for his beloved late wife, but an attractive woman to keep on show more his arm and to share a bed with.

The life suits them both of them until authorities arrest Alkaitis for stealing from his many wealthy clients. He goes to prison. Vincent goes into isolation, working aboard ships where nobody knows her past.

Meanwhile Mandel looks into the lives of the scheme's victims, as well as those who worked with Alkaitis and suspected something was wrong yet were making too much money to take a stand. While all this is going on, ghosts come and go, appearing to several people during the course of the novel.

This is not your usual crime novel — or ghost story — but it is a gem. show less

UPDATE: Added a star since I still can't get the book out of my mind.

Although I awarded 4 stars to this book when I finished it several years ago, I held back for a few days on writing a review because I didn't know what I wanted to say about it. Quite honestly, I don't feel adequate to the task of explaining the meaning of the book, and yet the images and messages won't let me go.

It's certainly beautifully written; the language and imagery are often exquisite, and the structure of the book, though complicated, glides along without a hitch.

At the core of the plot is a long running Ponzi scheme, clearly modeled after the one run by Bernie Madoff that imploded in late 2008. We approach this financial world obliquely, through characters show more who initially seem impossibly remote from it, but whose lives intersect with it by chance. There is a wealth of detail about the company running the Ponzi scheme, the people who own it, the people who work there, how it began, how it was sustained, and how it fell apart.

All of that is very concrete, very much rooted in real events and likely scenarios. But the essence of the book, the part that won't release me, is the representations of ways in which fate puts the characters of the book in the paths of one another, shows them opportunities, exploits their strengths and their vulnerabilities, their greed and their compassion. A sense of permeability between the living and the dead runs through the book, providing an aura of unreality, but also an enhanced appreciation of what it means to be real; how fragile are our connections to one another and to reality.

A unique book, one that I won't shake off easily. Upgraded to 5 stars. show less