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The Glass Hotel

Emily St. John Mandel (Goodreads Author)

3.71 · Rating details · 78,272 ratings · 9,845 reviews

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar pal ...more

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Kindle Edition, 302 pages

Published March 24th 2020 by Knopf

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Apr 09, 2020 emma rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, auto-buy-authors, owned, non-ya, couldn-t-wait-to-read, unpopular-opinion, reviewed, 2-and-a-half-stars, eh, dark

I was semi-relieved to be done with this book when I finished it, because it was at any given point somewhere between mildly and lethally disappointing to me, but every single person in my life was more relieved.

This is because I had a very specific issue with it. A little something I like to call NOTHING ANYONE DOES IN THIS BOOK MAKES ANY SENSE TO ME, LIKE SERIOUSLY AM I GOING INSANE OR IS EVERY CHARACTER A STRANGE SEMI-HUMANISH ALIEN AND WILL THAT BE REVEALED VIA COOL UFO-BASED PLOT TWIST AT T ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Marchpane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-releases, arc-from-netgalley

You may be wondering if The Glass Hotel is anything like Emily St John Mandel’s previous novel Station Eleven? The answer is no. AND yes.

Don’t get me wrong, The Glass Hotel is a very different kind of book. Its setting is realistic, not speculative. In place of Station Eleven’s focus on art (Shakespeare, music, comics) there is filthy lucre – specifically a Ponzi scheme bearing a striking resemblance to Bernie Madoff’s massive fraud. The romanticism of Station Eleven – its starlit gauziness You may be wondering if The Glass Hotel is anything like Emily St John Mandel’s previous novel Station Eleven? The answer is no. AND yes.

Don’t get me wrong, The Glass Hotel is a very different kind of book. Its setting is realistic, not speculative. In place of Station Eleven’s focus on art (Shakespeare, music, comics) there is filthy lucre – specifically a Ponzi scheme bearing a striking resemblance to Bernie Madoff’s massive fraud. The romanticism of Station Eleven – its starlit gauziness and heady atmosphere, beauty seen in a wildflower by the side of a highway clogged with rusted automobile carcasses – is dialled down here. Mandel’s writing is as evocative as ever, but her emphasis has shifted. In this novel full of morally questionable individuals, there aren’t as many pinpricks of light.

And yet common threads do emerge. Both books have a diffuse cast of characters; both narratives skip forwards and backwards, orbiting a central catastrophic worldwide event that forever bisects life into a before and an after. Station Eleven’s was a flu pandemic, The Glass Hotel’s is the 2008 financial crisis, which triggers the Ponzi scheme’s collapse. In both, the fallout from the singular event claims lives, and those that do survive are set to wandering.

There are more direct links too. Characters from the earlier book reappear here, and the idea of parallel universes – first raised in Station Eleven when characters imagine “a universe in which civilization hadn’t been so brutally interrupted” – also recurs. Mandel ties this to her theme of regret: the characters’ rueful ‘if only’ thinking manifests as reverberations between alternate realities, the ghost versions of lives that might have been, had they made different choices.

It’s as if Station Eleven – which had the feeling of a dream all along – is Oz and The Glass Hotel is Kansas. From parallel worlds arise parallel tales, different tonally but at heart, similar compositions. Mandel’s sensitive characterisations, meticulous layers, and musings on loss, regret and the frangibility of life are all here. It’s just a little less magical. 4 stars. ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Nilufer Ozmekik rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I’m just blinking, giving blank looks, a mesmerized expression on my face…This is spectacular…
When I admire someone’s extraordinary mind and extremely talented creative skills, any word to describe the work he/she created will not be enough to express my feelings. Emily St. John Mandel is the wizard and genius to surprise us how perfectly crafted words and smart story-telling, impeccably developed and layered characterization change our worlds.

This book is real puzzle: all the pieces perfectl I’m just blinking, giving blank looks, a mesmerized expression on my face…This is spectacular…
When I admire someone’s extraordinary mind and extremely talented creative skills, any word to describe the work he/she created will not be enough to express my feelings. Emily St. John Mandel is the wizard and genius to surprise us how perfectly crafted words and smart story-telling, impeccably developed and layered characterization change our worlds.

This book is real puzzle: all the pieces perfectly scattered around the chapters. You have to give your entire focus on the details because anything you read at those chapters and any clue about one character’s ordinary action create ripple effects on the other character’s main dilemma. We’re going back and forth during 19 years long timeline and we’re introduced with remarkable self- absorbed, swindler characters. They’re restless opportunists who knows seize the leverages for their own benefits, haunted by the choices they’ve made, facing the ghosts of their past mistakes.

Paul, spending his early 20’s dropping out and going back to rehab because of his drug addiction, kicking out from his house, reluctantly choosing the finance as a major even though he has great interest in music but a tragic incident he gets involved ( sharing drugs with the band members who want to befriend results with the death and now the ghost of the very same band member is chasing him everywhere!) , goes back to his father’s house, trying to form a bond with 13 year old step sister Vincent( strange name for a girl. No, she wasn’t named after the painter, it is middle name of her mother’s favorite poet!) who recently lost her mother. But his father is adamant to send Vincent to live with her aunt.

After 4 years later, Vincent and Paul get back together at the dilapidated neighborhood surrounded by drug addicts. That’s where Vincent and her roommate lives and they are getting ready to welcome new millennium as Hotel Caiette’s - five star glass- construction continues.

And a few years later we see Vincent working as a bartender, she helps to Paul getting a job as well but when his brother writes an irritating note on the windowed wall ( we don’t know why he wrote it till the end!) Leo Prevant, a shipping executive sees the note and he doesn’t take it well. Walter who works as inspector finds out Paul’s wrongdoings and forces him to quit his job as the wealthy businessman, owner of the hotel Jonathan Alkaitis (Paul keeps asking his whereabouts which is also found suspicious by Walter! ) arrives at the place, flirting with new bartender.

And a few months later Walter finds out their bartender who quits after her stepbrother’s leaving the place became the wife of Jonathan from the couple’s charity gala attendance photos. But Vincent didn’t marry with Jonathan. She just seized the opportunity to live a luxurious life without thinking money first time in her life as her pretending husband/ boyfriend making shushed talks and scheming about his business plans discreetly. Then BAM we got the reason of the secrecy: A Ponzi Scheme erupts in Big Apple, dragging countless fortunes with it! Jonathan gets arrested and ruins so many people’s lives.

So when you keep reading and getting the clues to fill the blanks about the characters’ destinies, you may put most pieces at the right place. This is fascinating, memorable and intense reading helping you to connect with the flawed characters and the way of their dealing with guilt feelings with supernatural motifs. I get mesmerized with the beauty of writing and I didn’t want it to end and I did my best to read this one slower than my normal routine to absorb each word, sentences, dialogues, entire details.

Maybe it’s too early to tell but not for me: This is gonna be one of my best 10 reads of the year and I already listed at my all-time favorite list. This is masterpiece. Stop procrastinating! Just read it! And send me thank you notes for recommendation.

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Aug 02, 2020 Roxane rated it liked it · review of another edition

Beautifully written but this book is doing way too much. A Ponzi scheme, a brother who is an addict and composer, a sister who is a trophy wife and then a ship’s cook, a hotel on a remote Canadian island, also ghosts, and the ways all these things are connected. I admire the ambition but it doesn’t cohere, for me. Still enjoyed reading.

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Dec 04, 2019 Paromjit rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, netgalley

Emily St. John Mandel writes an exquisite other worldly novel, slightly surreal as if peering through a misted looking glass, of alternative realities, paths not taken, ghosts, of a diverse and disparate cast of characters, their lives and connections revealed as the narrative goes back and forth in time. It is a story of greed, immense wealth, a financial empire built on the shifting sands of an international Ponzi scheme, reflecting the real life example of Bernie Madoff, and the financial col Emily St. John Mandel writes an exquisite other worldly novel, slightly surreal as if peering through a misted looking glass, of alternative realities, paths not taken, ghosts, of a diverse and disparate cast of characters, their lives and connections revealed as the narrative goes back and forth in time. It is a story of greed, immense wealth, a financial empire built on the shifting sands of an international Ponzi scheme, reflecting the real life example of Bernie Madoff, and the financial collapse in 2008. Mandel tracks her victims and perpetrators with their interwoven lives, the characterisation sharp yet subtle, nuanced, with the capacity to see the humanity of both in a profoundly moving way. She intricately pieces together different lives, structured to intrigue, with answers that comes together holistically at the end.

Vincent is a bartender at the 5 star Hotel Caiette, located in the far north of Vancouver Island, where a message has been written on the glass wall of the lobby, 'Why don't you swallow broken glass'. This has Leon Prevant, a shipping executive, needing a drink, but the message is missed by the intended target, the owner of the hotel and investment manager, Jonathan Alkaitis. The meeting that night of Vincent and Jonathan, leads to her becoming a 'trophy wife', whose life becomes opened to a world of untold wealth and riches. However, with the swift collapse of the financial empire, lives are ruined and devastated, individuals and retirement pensions wiped out. Her brother Paul, a drug addict with a love of music, studies finance, becoming a drop out. The story begins and ends with Vincent's disappearance from the Neptune Cumberland, between which are skilfully woven in glimpses of the lives lived, greed, ghosts, corruption, regrets, reflections on paths not taken, grief, loss, memory, conscience and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Mandel is a powerful, beautiful and offbeat writer, so atmospheric, evocative, dreamy, lingering in her wide range of often surprising locations, her scope in location and character is extraordinary. This novel felt artistic, ambitious, and highly imaginative, although possibly it may not appeal to some readers as it demands patience before its direction and purpose become clear. This is a stunning and spellbinding read, unforgettable, gripping as it penetrates the themes of financial crisis, its repercussions and the process of survival. Cannot recommend this highly enough. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for an ARC. ...more

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Nov 18, 2019 Bethany Everett rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This is a really hard book to rate for me because I feel as if this simply was just not a book. This was a collection of life struggles and lessons and observations through a million different characters, and you never really get the satisfaction of understanding. There was no real story to this, in the traditional sense. This felt to me like a book of short stories all mashed together into a confusing ball of a book. I enjoyed the start, as it follows one character (Paul) through grief and unde ...more

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Jul 26, 2019 karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: from-publisher-or-author

oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best fiction 2020! what will happen?

i am going to put this book in a time capsule, to be opened in fifty years, with the following note:

the world is almost entirely terrible right now, except for this book.

and if there is anyone left alive on the planet fifty years from now to dig it up, they, too, will declare this book a masterpiece.

because yoo-mons don't change, not really, and this book proves once again that emily st. john mandel has a deeper, br ...more

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Mar 25, 2020 jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

this story definitely falls under the whole ‘its not what you say, but how you say it.’

honestly, i couldnt care less about the subject of this novel. a good 1/3 of the book is about the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of a ponzi scheme. that is not something that interests me one bit. but how mandel portrays this topic, how she effectively structures the narrative, and how she intertwines the lives of the characters is really fascinating. i found myself enjoying this because i liked how t ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I’m too biased about Emily St. John Mandel to be completely objective. I’m a huge fan!!!

Every novel is exquisitely written, compelling, and utterly absorbing.

Emily chooses her words carefully- consciously - vibrantly - never leaving me with the feeling that anything needs to be edited.

I met this extraordinary author in 2010...
after buying and reading her first book through Unbridled books....an independent book company that features new books by new hot-and-up-incoming- authors.

Emily’s first ...more

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Jul 27, 2020 JanB rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reads, fiction

4.5 stars
The Glass Hotel is much more than a story about financial corruption. It’s about complex, self-delusional people motivated by greed, and the people caught up and destroyed in their orbit.

Atmospheric and haunting, the first half is a slow build but the beautiful writing carries the story. There are multiple characters, moving back and forth in time over two decades, and patience is required in the beginning. I trusted the author and was rewarded as she wove all the seemingly disparate t 4.5 stars
The Glass Hotel is much more than a story about financial corruption. It’s about complex, self-delusional people motivated by greed, and the people caught up and destroyed in their orbit.

Atmospheric and haunting, the first half is a slow build but the beautiful writing carries the story. There are multiple characters, moving back and forth in time over two decades, and patience is required in the beginning. I trusted the author and was rewarded as she wove all the seemingly disparate threads together beautifully.

There are plenty of peripheral characters but Vincent (a girl named after Edna St. Vincent Millay), is the central character and opens and closes the book. Her brother Paul, along with Jonathan Alkaitis, the architect of a Ponzi scheme, are the other two major players.

Art, in all its forms, plays an important part in the character’s lives. There are multiple themes, but they are not heavy-handed. Much of the common thread that ties the characters together is a theme of what people know or don’t know and how willing they are to skirt the edges of ethical and moral behavior. Sometimes the line between right and wrong is a firm line in the sand, other times the line is thin. The theme of self-deception is explored throughout the book:

“It’s possible to both know and not know something,” ….he spoke for several of us actually, several of us who’d been thinking a great deal about that doubleness, that knowing and not knowing, being honorable and not being honorable, knowing you’re not a good person but trying to be a good person regardless around the margins of the bad.”

There is often a dreamlike quality to the writing as characters long dead show up on the periphery of a character’s vision. Whether they are really there or not is questionable, as “There are so many ways to haunt a person, or a life.”

I had decided to skip this one because I wasn’t a fan of Station Eleven, but I am so glad I decided to give it a chance. I finished this a couple of weeks ago but needed to sit with it before writing a review. I love a book that makes me think and the more I mulled it over, the more the story grew on me. Don’t rush this one! ...more

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Feb 16, 2020 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm not usually attracted to books that feature financial elements, but in this case I made an exception. Simply because I love how this author writes and the way she puts together a story. I'm so glad I went with my intuition, which shows sometimes you just need to trust a favored author.

Although this is about a Ponzi scheme, it is so much more. It is the story of Vincent, a female, named after Edna St. Vincent Milay , and she is a fasinating character. A sort of chameleon, trying to find her w ...more

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Sep 26, 2020 Danielle rated it liked it · review of another edition

Unpopular opinion here, don’t come at me friends, but this read was kinda disappointing. 😬 I guess because station eleven was so great, I was expecting more? 🤷🏼‍♀️ This story follows two broken siblings trying to stumble their way through life. It’s a pretty tragic story, in my opinion. I was left feeling sad and just kinda depressed- but don’t let that dissuade you from reading and forming your own opinion. ❤️📚

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Dec 19, 2019 Melanie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads, read-in-2020, maëlys, adult, audible, quarantine-reads

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Feb 22, 2020 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: business, greed

”Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid. The strategy had seemed to adhere to a certain logic, even if the precise mechanics--puts, calls, options, holds, conversions--swam just outside of his grasp. ‘Look,’ Alkaitis had said, at his warmest and most accommodating, ‘I could break it all down for you, but I think you unde ...more

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Apr 07, 2020 Nataliya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reads

“There are so many ways to haunt a person, or a life.”

There is something undeniably magical about this story. It is strange, a bit surreal and dreamlike and sometimes even slightly disorienting. And it takes a while for you to resurface from its emotional weight that somehow creeps up upon you when you really don’t expect it.

“It is possible to leave so much out of any given story.”

It is a story about people and the connections that form between them, the strange ways their lives touch,

“There are so many ways to haunt a person, or a life.”

“It is possible to leave so much out of any given story.”

It is a story about people and the connections that form between them, the strange ways their lives touch, intersect and overlap briefly, causing unexpected ripples on otherwise smooth surfaces, only to diverge again and then maybe converge in a new pattern, for better or worse. It is about the strange directions that lives can take - or not take, the lives lived and unlived and wished for, the alternate realities which can haunt you relentlessly.

It is a story of greed and guilt and dreams and failures and regrets.

This book does not have a conventional plot. It’s like it’s made of vignettes that eventually come together and form a larger story, come to a greater whole. It made me think of those five-minute videos that Vincent obsessively takes - short but vivid glimpses into life, open-ended and with little resolution - like shards of the universes that we inhabit.

“No, money is a country and he had the keys to the kingdom.”

Nobody in this book is perfect. Everyone is messy and pathetic and frequently awful - and so very human. Emily St John Mandel clearly *gets* people, sees them in their complexity and is able to bring them to life so skillfully, with so much nuance and understanding that it’s a pleasure to read.

“I’m paying a price for this life, she told herself, but the price is reasonable.”

Despite what the book description made me think, you really don’t need to know anything about how Ponzi schemes work. All that’s important here is that it is a giant fraud that can make people feel good for a while with the windfall of unearned cash, and then it eventually collapses, destroying lives by stripping people of everything they thought they had. The coveted “country of money“ can quickly become the “shadowland” of those fallen through the cracks.

“It wasn’t the stuff that kept her in this strange new life, in the kingdom of money; it wasn’t the clothing and objects and handbags and shoes. It wasn’t the beautiful home, the travel; it wasn’t Jonathan’s company, although she did genuinely like him; it wasn’t even inertia. What kept her in the kingdom was the previously unimaginable condition of not having to think about money, because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money. If you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life.”

Beautiful book. Loved it. 4.5 stars. ...more

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Jul 30, 2019 Blair rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-release, edelweiss, past-and-present, read-on-kindle

Review written July 2019: It must be incredibly difficult for a writer to follow a monster hit like Station Eleven. Everyone, it seems, is dying to read The Glass Hotel, and that includes me: I normally think it's a little obnoxious to review an advance copy 6+ months before the book's publication, but I simply could not wait to dive into this one. So I will get this out of the way first: The Glass Hotel is not post-apocalyptic, it's not dystopian, it's straight literary fiction (which is not to ...more

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Oct 17, 2019 Tammy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“You should eat broken glass.”

The sentence above, a remote island hotel, a Ponzi scheme, a container ship, a lost young woman, and a ghostly presence provide the framework for this masterful novel about greed, guilt, ambition, and love. The writing is languid and dreamy yet still page-turning as the stories of the interconnected characters fold back upon themselves. This is a mesmerizing, unearthly novel with characters throwing stones and crossing lines. Don’t miss it.

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Mar 10, 2020 Carolyn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, society, 2020, relationships, contemporary, netgalley-2020

In Emily St John Mandel's previous much loved novel ‘Station Eleven’ she wrote about a post-apocalyptic world which had an almost dream-like feel. This novel is centred around a modern day financial calamity but has that same ethereal, other worldly quality. Hotel Caiette, the glass hotel, itself feels disconnected from time and place "an improbable palace lit up against the darkness of the forest" with it's wall of glass looking over the wilderness. Built on a small island off the north coast o In Emily St John Mandel's previous much loved novel ‘Station Eleven’ she wrote about a post-apocalyptic world which had an almost dream-like feel. This novel is centred around a modern day financial calamity but has that same ethereal, other worldly quality. Hotel Caiette, the glass hotel, itself feels disconnected from time and place "an improbable palace lit up against the darkness of the forest" with it's wall of glass looking over the wilderness. Built on a small island off the north coast of Vancouver Island, it can only be reached by boat and allows guests to feel that they are in the middle of wilderness without having to actually be in it, instead cocooned in the luxury of a modern hotel.

The glass hotel is not so much the focus of the book as the centrepoint where the characters paths cross and chance meetings and decisions are made that will affect all their futures. The main character, Vincent Smith is the night bartender at the hotel. She grew up in Caiette but left at the age of thirteen when her mother disappeared while kayaking. While working one night she will meet the owner of the hotel, Jonathan Alkaitis, a wealthy New York financier and leave to start a new life with him. Vincent's half brother Paul, also working at the hotel as a night porter, after dropping out of business school, but is a thwarted musician. Jealous of Vincent for her relationship with their father who left Paul's mother for Vincent's, Paul is already bored with the job and ready for any opportunity coming his way. In the early hours of the morning Leon Prevant, a shipping executive and insomniac, sipping his whisky, is the only guest in the bar when someone camouflaged in black etches an extraordinary phrase on the glass window shocking all who see it. Leon will also meet Jonathan Alkaitis later that day and make a decision that will later change his life forever.

Those at the hotel that night will move on to other lives. Ones that that will involve greed, betrayal, theft and fraud and feel no less unreal than living in the glass hotel. Vincent finds herself living in the rarefied world of the very wealthy where spending thousands shopping soon becomes boring and will later find herself living at sea in another existence that seems to exist outside of the world.

The novel is strangely beautiful given it is about financial fraud and is infused with Mandel's lyrical, atmospheric writing. The characters are subtly and fully depicted. Following the corruption there will be suicides but also survival and re-invention for some, but always with the danger of slipping below the surface into madness or into that shadowland of mere existence in contemporary America. A very inventive and almost hypnotic novel to read.

With many thanks to Pan Macmillan Australia and Netgalley for a digital ARC to read ...more

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Aug 28, 2020 Carol rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-audible, literary-fiction

****4.5 Stars****My first novel by this author and it is a dazzling and haunting story. I was fascinated by its allusions to the financial crisis of 2008, the aftermath, and the Ponzi fraudster extraordinaire, Bernie Madoff.

The author’s “glass” hotel suggests that our lives are precarious, and our situations are unpredictable. All the characters are connected in some way to Jonathan Alkaitis, the wealthy investor that perpetuated the Ponzi scheme, and many of them are visited by ghosts.

The nove ...more

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Oct 13, 2019 Andrew Smith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley

Anyone who has read Station Eleven or in fact any of the author’s previous novels will know that Mandel writes thoughtful and addictive stories. Her prose doesn’t shout a story at you, it’s far more subtle than that. Instead you’re more likely to be taken through a gentle maze of events that eventually knit together to deliver a gut punch. This book starts with what appears to be a scene of Vincent’s final moments after falling off a ship. One of what may be her final thoughts is a wish to see Anyone who has read Station Eleven or in fact any of the author’s previous novels will know that Mandel writes thoughtful and addictive stories. Her prose doesn’t shout a story at you, it’s far more subtle than that. Instead you’re more likely to be taken through a gentle maze of events that eventually knit together to deliver a gut punch. This book starts with what appears to be a scene of Vincent’s final moments after falling off a ship. One of what may be her final thoughts is a wish to see her brother. Quickly the time frame changes and we’re introduced to to Paul, a dropout from the University of Toronto where he was studying finance. Paul’s real interest is music but for reasons that will become apparent later he ended up studying a subject he really had no interest in. Paul, we learn, has a half-sister called Vincent.

The story floats about in both time and place. The time element runs from the early 1990’s to close to the present day and the places are principally British Columbia and Manhattan. When we next come across Vincent and Paul they are both working at a luxury hotel situated at the most northerly tip of Vancouver Island. One night a lone guest spots a disturbing message scrawled on the large glass window of the lounge. Later that same night Vincent, who runs the bar, meets the rich owner of the hotel and a strange deal is struck between the two. We’ll make sense of these two events, but not yet, not for some time.

There are essentially two threads at play: the story of Vincent and Paul, of their early life and of how their lives play out and then, as the cast expands, the impact of a Ponzi Scheme on its investors as it all goes belly up and their money is lost. Anyone familiar with the notorious Bernie Madoff investment scandal will have a sense of just how totally investors in this type of full-on con can be financially ruined. And interestingly a couple of characters we meet along the way featured in the aforementioned Station Eleven; things turn out differently for Miranda Carroll and Leon Prevant in this book. So what do we have here, a Sliding Doors style set-up in which a very different life for this pair plays out? It’s a quirky element in this intriguing piece.

I love the way the story is put together. After each player is introduced we lose sight of them for a while, only to catch up with them later. Each is deftly drawn and sympathetically brought to life and I found myself caring for all of them, even the bad guy at the centre of the fraud. The time shifts are also brilliantly effective and allow the story to play out in a surprising but highly effective way. There are ghosts here too and that’s not something I’m usually accepting of in any tale, but strangely they work here – they provide a linkage and ultimately a wholeness to the story that might not otherwise be there.

This book is due to be published in March 2020, some six months from now and I’m sure it will find many, many admirers. I absolutely loved it. I finished reading it a couple of days ago but it’s taken me a little while to clear my mind and to capture my thoughts on it – in truth, it’s been deeply embedded in my head from the first day I started it.

My sincere thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for providing a hcopy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ...more

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Mar 15, 2020 Stephanie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, read-in-2020

Thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC!

This started at four stars for me. Towards the middle, it was sitting at a three. And by the end - I hate to say it, because I was so excited to read this - but I'm sticking with two. Two stars means for me: although it might have had a few redeeming elements and might be better for you, I wouldn't recommend it.

Really, this just seemed like a mess made up of very interesting things that were just out of focus. A secluded luxury hotel, a collapsing ...more

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Apr 11, 2020 Samantha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

tw: mentions of suicide; drug abuse/overdose; death of a parent; death of a sibling

This is a book that’s difficult to the review. I was worried about not enjoying this book, as the synopsis doesn’t at all interest me but I loved Station Eleven, another book by this author. I ended up reading this book in two days. This is a character study and Mandel makes you care about their stories. Similar to Station Eleven, it’s a hard book to describe and recommend but definitely give it a chance if you ar ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Henk rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

An interconnected tale of people drifting between the late capitalistic lands of money and shadows
”Small world”
“The smallness of the world never ceases to amaze me.”

Money and (a)morality
It wasn’t that she was about to lose everything, it was that she’d already lost everything and just didn’t know it yet.
Emily St. John Mandel weaves an interconnected tale around Vincent (a girl) and Paul, half siblings growing up on a remote island in the vicinity of Vancouver.
Both experience trauma, Vincent due ...more

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Mar 24, 2020 Ron Charles rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: finances-in-fiction, historical-fiction, novels-about-art

Bad timing: Emily St. John Mandel is releasing a novel in the middle of a pandemic that has shuttered libraries and bookstores across the country.

At least Mandel knows what she’s getting into. Her previous novel, “Station Eleven,” described the world decimated by a deadly virus. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a finalist for a National Book Award, “Station Eleven” was terrifically successful when it appeared in 2014, and this month it’s showing up on everybody’s grim coronavirus reading ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Beverly rated it it was amazing

Trying to capture the essence of this book in a review is maddening. Greatness, is difficult to describe, but I recognize it when I see it. The story of a brother, Paul and his little sister, Vincent (named after the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay) connecting and disconnecting throughout their lives is what is told here.

Every time I would read a section, I would be enthralled and mesmerized. Time dropped away and only the life in the book was real. I loved her book, Station Eleven too. The two b ...more

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Oct 04, 2020 PorshaJo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, challengereads, giveaways, audio, challengereads-2020, favorites-2020

Rating 4.5

I'm a dope. When Station Eleven came out, I said 'yeah, I'm not into dystopian' and resisted reading it. I finally gave in and really enjoyed it. I said I would read more by this author. Then, I won a copy of The Glass Hotel from BookMark. The book sat for months as I said 'yeah, I'm not into finance and ponzi schemes'. My library got the audio and I would get it, return it, and get it again. I don't know what made me start it this time.....but I'm a dope for waiting so long to read it Rating 4.5

I'm a dope. When Station Eleven came out, I said 'yeah, I'm not into dystopian' and resisted reading it. I finally gave in and really enjoyed it. I said I would read more by this author. Then, I won a copy of The Glass Hotel from BookMark. The book sat for months as I said 'yeah, I'm not into finance and ponzi schemes'. My library got the audio and I would get it, return it, and get it again. I don't know what made me start it this time.....but I'm a dope for waiting so long to read it.

The Glass Hotel is a story of greed, story of people, a few people are focused on, a story that is told back and forth in time, beginning at the end. Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Vincent is a female, named after Edna St. Vincent Milay. Here she meets her "husband", owner of the hotel, Jonathan Alkaitis. Her half-brother Paul, who is a troubled soul from his early childhood, works here for a short time. The story of these three are told, a heartbreaking story, and how all their lives are impacted by various events, specifically the ponzi scheme. Jonathan goes to jail for the ponzi scheme, where he sees ghosts of the past, the people impacted by his crime. But the others too, how are they impacted for the rest of their lives by this event. Not only just Vincent and Paul, but others, those who worked for him and knew what they were doing was wrong, but continued. And those who invested with him, how were they impacted by all of this. Fascinating.

Honestly, I don't think I can do this one justice. I finished it yesterday and still thinking about it. I switched back and forth between print and audio, as I had both, but really I couldn't put it down. A great look into various characters. Everything not wrapped up with a bow, some questions left unanswered (hence a knock on the rating). I found it more of a focus on the crime of the ponzi scheme and not the details of the scheme itself, so not heavy on the finance. I'm sorry I waited so long to read it, but the TBR mountain and struggle with it are REAL. So many wonderful books. But I'll be sure to go back now and read more older books by this author. I want to thank BookMark's First Readers Club and Knopf for the hardback copy that I won, this in no way influenced by review. It is one of my favorites of the year. ...more

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Oct 20, 2019 Ceecee rated it really liked it · review of another edition

At first, I found the storyline all over the place and I felt a bit baffled because I couldn’t see where it was heading. It jumped from timeline to timeline and character to character in a seemingly random and disconnected fashion and I couldn’t join the dots! Then it all began to slot into place and I saw the reasoning and then I was able to settle into enjoying the book.

The 5 star luxury Glass Hotel was in Caiette, a small and remote part of Vancouver Island. It was owned by super wealthy Jon At first, I found the storyline all over the place and I felt a bit baffled because I couldn’t see where it was heading. It jumped from timeline to timeline and character to character in a seemingly random and disconnected fashion and I couldn’t join the dots! Then it all began to slot into place and I saw the reasoning and then I was able to settle into enjoying the book.

The 5 star luxury Glass Hotel was in Caiette, a small and remote part of Vancouver Island. It was owned by super wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis and part of the story was about his Ponzi scheme but also was about his ‘wife’ Vincent who disappeared from the deck of the ship Neptune Cumberland. The story started with this and ended with it so the beginning is literally the end and I liked this circular approach. The storylines in the novel jump around from the 1990’s to 2029 as we follow the disastrous fall of the house of Alkaitis. I thought the financial sections about the scheme were really interesting and I thought the air of panic was really well captured although there was some relief from Jonathan that the deception was over. I found his thoughts on the fraud fascinating as he suggested that his investors must have known as no one got returns as they did unless it was too good to be true. Offloading blame? Some truth or delusion? Were they all deluded?

I loved the ‘ghostly’ element to the book and thought that was very clever as characters who were dead appeared to the living or was it their guilty conscience? The book has a number of allegorical elements and the allegory I liked the best was of the swan who should have flown south but stayed in the water too long and froze which was clearly what Jonathan did. He should have bailed long before he was unmasked and so he too froze in the water. I liked Jonathan’s Counterlife and Non Counterlife which he used to escape the day to day reality of being caught and it looked at an alternate ‘reality’. I also very much liked the character of pragmatic Vincent, the other characters were not so likeable but they were well depicted.

However, I never entirely got to grips with the jumping around in time and the tangential elements of the story which I found irritating. Overall, though, a very intriguing book which was very well written and one I will remember.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan McMillan for the ARC. ...more

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Feb 23, 2020 Jasmine Guillory rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Got in the bathtub at 10pm and opened to the first page of this book; was completely unable to make myself get out of the bathtub until 1:30 am when I turned the last page. Absolutely incredible; I read it a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since; am furious it’s not out yet because I want to talk about it with everyone. I adored Station Eleven and was worried I wouldn’t love this one as much and if you’re also worried about that do not worry! It’s very very different than Stati ...more

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Mar 29, 2020 Anna Luce rated it liked it

Shelves: ebooks-overdrive, 2020-reviews, 6-so-so-reads

★★★✰✰ 3 stars

“But they were citizens of a shadow country that in his previous life he’d only dimly perceived, a country located at the edge of an abyss. ”

Emily St. John Mandel’s prose in The Glass Hotel is certainly striking. She deftly weaves realism with a dreamlike atmosphere, while also adding an elegiac touch to otherwise mundane scenes and observations. Occasionally her style seems intentionally opaque, such as when she keeps her characters’ motivations slightly out of our reach. Neverthe ...more

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Jan 21, 2021 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I dug this book so much and now I have to read everything the author has written.

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About Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel

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Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Aw ...more