Book Review: "The Glass Hotel" by Emily St. John Mandel
“The Glass Hotel” by Emily St. John Mandel
Synopsis:
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.—Penguin RandomHouse
Rating (out of 5): 4.75
Review: I had some serious impostor syndrome about trying to review this book. It’s just so brilliant that I feel as though anything I write won’t do the plot justice. I was excited about this book when I saw that it had been released, but held off a bit until I placed a large bookstore order last month. Given that Mandel wrote the only apocalypse novel I’ve ever enjoyed, “Station Eleven,” I should have known that I’d be absorbed by this one.
Vincent, an orphaned and somewhat aimless bartender at the Hotel Caiette (the glass hotel of the title), has an older brother who struggles with addiction, also working at the hotel. One fateful night, an act of vandalism shakes Vincent to her core, her brother is fired, and Vincent collides with Jonathan Alkaitis, a much-older investor. She leaves with Alkaitis and begins a life with him.
Alkaitis, it soon emerges, is a Bernie Madoff character, running a Ponzi scheme. His inescapable downfall is a major focus of the novel, of course, but Mandel layers the plot so brilliantly that the “ghosts” of Alkaitis’ past are very present.
Vincent and her brother continue on unpredictable paths that occasionally collide. The ending of the book is so gorgeously woven, I am totally in awe with Mandel. The feel of the novel is ghostly, ethereal, ephemeral, and even with such dark themes, full of redemption.
TL;DR: An absolutely gorgeous literary novel with one of the most intricate (yet not remotely showy) plots I’ve ever come across. Everyone should read this.
If you liked this, try:
“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel
“All Things Cease to Appear” by Elizabeth Brundage
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