The Glass Hotel

A Novel

By: Emily St. John Mandel

Narrated by: Dylan Moore

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

International Best Seller • 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 Post)

From 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 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!

©2020 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Long-anticipated... At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical.... In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure. A strange, subtle, and haunting novel." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

"Another tale of wanderers whose fates are interconnected...nail-biting tension...Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story.... A gorgeously rendered tragedy." (Booklist, starred review)

"Mandel’s wonderful novel (after Station Eleven) follows a brother and sister as they navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt.... This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Underwhelmed

It was ok. By the time I got to the end of it, I wondered why there was so much extra information that never ended up mattering. It’s just a story where nothing much happens.

wanted to love it, but was unsatisfied with story

I truly enjoyed station eleven by Mandel, and this narration was great (although some of the accents were just beyond the narrators
scope). the characters were vivid yet disconnected and I found it hard to follow the jumping timelines and multi character /country stories at times. the tragedies and moral failures mount in this book and there's no one to root for, just a massive sad story with interconnected people and fascinating portrayals of the economic evils of America

Missing a Plot!

I waited for this book and bought it the first day it was released. Such a disappointment - I know it is hard for a writer to top or even compete with an earlier book that was popular. Unfortunately, this book did not even come close to "Station 11."

The first half is rambling through the lives of totally unlikable characters. My ears did not perk up at all until Jonathon Alquatis is in prison for 170 years, only because I wanted to find out who he killed to get that type of sentence.

Apparantly, this Canadian author believes that there is truly justice in the US for "white-collar" criminals. Sorry to disappoint - other than the period Wall Street was closed due to the Corona virus, Ponzi schemes and other non-existent "funds" that destroy hard working people's lives and retirement are an on-going regular occurrence in the US and even if the SEC discovers and arrests the perpetrator, 170 years in prison would never occur in the real world for anything short of mass murder and only then if the defendant is not wealthy. My point is Jonathan's trial and sentence would never happen - I know it is fiction, but not even close to reality.

The narrator's performance was wonderful. I did like the character of Vincent, at least her free spirit. I would hope that I could have the courage to move on to a job on a ship after being in "the world of money", other than suicide. She was a flawed human being but apparently she was the only one who had a conscience. Those characters that knowingly participated in the con were sad because they got caught & the characters who were victimized are sad because they lost their "rich life style". But nobody, except maybe Vincent, was truly sorry for what happened.

I just wish there could have been an interesting & relevant plot - a Ponzi scheme - old news!

Engrossing; awful narration

An engrossing binge-listen. The characters have no inner world, just inner thoughts, so it's not really nourishing, but is still an elegant visit to a specific universe. The narration is utterly painful with the narrator pronouncing the word "a" as "A", and "the" as "thee" before consonants in every third or forth sentence, including in dialog where the characters would not believably do so. So distracting.

Excellent follow-up to Station Eleven

It's been a few days since I finished The Glass Hotel and initially it felt to me like a slightly better than four-star book but I haven't stop thinking about it since, and it really left an impression on me so I'm bumping up the rating. I thought the ending was deeply poignant and I don't know how it could've been better.

The hotel referred to in the title is the fictional Hotel Caiette located on Vancouver Island, where the two main characters and half-siblings Vincent and Paul work for a spell. The word "glass" in the title refers to two bits of graffiti painted on glass, both of which play pivotal points in the plot; one painted by Vincent during her school days and one painted by Paul on one of the hotel's windows. Paul's motivation for doing this is a mystery and not explained until later in the novel.

Unlike the author's last book, this one isn't dystopian but one could argue it is a financial dystopian story because a Madoff-like ponzi scheme plays a central role in the novel. Furthermore, much of this book is set around the time of the financial crisis of 10-12 years ago so there is a lot of underlying economic gloom and doom. I think I felt connection to what was going on in the novel because of the fact that my job in banking was affected negatively and was sometimes difficult during this economic crisis.

The book's narrative jumps around in time and from character to character, although Vincent's story is fleshed out the most thoroughly. Paul plays a major role as well. Initially, I thought the novel started slow, and was going to focus on the drug addled and unmotivated Paul, but I was happy that most of the story was devoted to the more interesting Vincent. We are given glimpses, some long and some short, in to the lives of a number of the secondary characters, many of which are affected by the ponzi scheme. As the novel moves along, and as the ponzi scheme unravels the novel's mood gets more and more gloomy and woeful.

By the novel's end the interconnectedness of all the characters is understood and loose ends tied up, and all that's left is the revelation of the main mystery. While I thought St. John Mandel's Station Eleven was a better book, The Glass Hotel was a still a five-star read for me. I listened to this on Audible, and Dylan Moore's narration was fantastic.

Wonderful

I really enjoyed this book. Explores characters either directly or peripherally involved with a Ponzi scheme, It is well written and well narrated, just a wonderful book. I highly recommend.

too Introspective

There was a lot to keep track of and many stories within one. I found the introspective thoughts of the characters confusing and unnecessary. two mysteries sort of unsolved. feel like Paul could have a sequel

great writing, not so great story

I kept asking myself what the point of this book was. mildly entertaining, beautifully written. wouldn't recommend as a "page turner".

Meandering

The story was somewhat entertaining (though for the amount of story, there was a tedious amount of detail) and interwove a lot of characters along the way. I have to say I didn’t really get it though. What was the point? We really didn’t get to know any individual person, or feel satisfied in understanding their decisions.Also the narrator only had a few variations in the tone, and voices and often came across as smirky.

Not Even Sure What This Book is About....

This book started out well but very quickly went downhill. The storyline is so convoluted and confusing - it's all over the place. I had a very hard time connecting the dots. Many times I was left wondering "why is she telling us this? How does this add to the story?"

The characters were not fully developed, and there are way too many of them - they exist, talk, move around, and seemingly have lives, but they are automatons and I really didn't care about any of them. Also, the narration is AWFUL...vey monotone, all the characters' voices sound the same, and I almost cringed when she attempted to speak with an accent.

If you decide to pick this one up, good luck. And please don't listen to this if you're on a long drive and alone; you'll fall asleep.