I’m a huge fan of Emily St. John Mandel. The first book of hers I read was Station Eleven, which I went into with no expectations, and which completely wowed me. It was delicate, thought provoking, had beautiful imagery and also terrified me to the depths of my soul. I then went on to read Last Night in Montreal, which was deeply unsettling, dark, and played with the borders of reality and perception. I was excited to try her new book when it came up in my round of The BookTube Prize, but had also heard some mixed reviews, so I went into it with tempered expectations.
The book deals with several characters, all of whom are connected to one another either by family or through their relationships to other characters. The book jumps back and forth between them, but most tie in with the story of Vincent, a beautiful young bartender turned trophy wife (sort of). The story jumps back and forth between different characters and times, and in doing so slowly gathers the disparate threads to weave a pattern only the reader can ever see fully.
I’ve heard it criticized for being a bit scattered and all over the place, which I can understand, but I found that there was a method in the madness. My mum, who also read the book right before I did, told me that she had heard an interview in which the author said that she wrote the story in pieces, going wherever the story or characters took her rather than following a more structured path. That makes a lot of sense and explains some of that feeling of bouncing around. I liked this, however, because I found it interesting to see how such seemingly unrelated events and characters could end up connecting. And I felt like I was on a journey of discovery right along with the author, which meant there was never a dull moment. There was a constant sense of discovery. It also allowed me to see different aspects of the characters, and understand how they could be perceived one way in one part of their life, and then seem to be an entirely different person when viewed by someone else.
As she always does, Mandel created some complex moral conundrums and made me feel almost sympathetic towards people who made some horrendous mistakes, and caused a lot of pain in the process. She showed how sometimes people who start off a mess eventually find a way forward (even if underneath they are always a mess) and how people who seem to be at the pinnacle of success may actually be even more messy than those who seem to be disastrous. It showed how loss and guilt can shape an entire life, and how sometimes a peripheral event or chance meeting can alter a person’s path forever.
I loved the writing in this book, as I expected to, and I also enjoyed the somewhat scattershot structure. It was different and interesting, even if it did require keeping track of several strands. It left me feeling like I had a lot to think about, but I was also satisfied with the overall experience. It lived up to my earlier experiences with Emily St. John Mandel’s work, rather than the mixed reviews I had heard, which was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t perfect – some of the storyline could have been cut or tightened up a bit – but I didn’t mind because I was enjoying the journey so much. It definitely shores up my desire to continue reading more of Mandel’s work!
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse 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 is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire 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, the business of international shipping, 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. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Glass Hotel
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Series: No
Edition: Hardback/Audiobook
Published By: Knopf Publishing Group
Released: March 24, 2020
Genre: Fiction, Family, Consequences, Wealth
Pages: 302
Date Read: May 3-4, 2021
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.69/5 (90,949 ratings)
My BookTube Prize Ranking: 3rd out of 6