The Glass Hotel

By: Emily St. John Mandel

Narrated by: Dylan Moore

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times bestselling novel, from the author of Station Eleven.

Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: ‘Why don’t you swallow broken glass.’ Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later, just after a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.

Weaving together the lives of these characters, Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the towers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.

©2020 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2020 Macmillan Digital Audio

Critic reviews

"Dylan Moore's cool, smooth narration carries listeners through this story of deception, betrayal, and the cost of guilt. Jonathan Alkaitis constructed the Ponzi scheme of the century, and the novel centers around the myriad ramifications of its collapse. Throughout the audiobook listeners are dropped into the minds of those who were drawn into his web as investors or as co-conspirators. Many are haunted, quite literally, by those impacted by their actions. This is a novel that drifts from one point of view to another, and Moore guides listeners through subtle shifts in tone and accent." (AudioFile, April 2020)

"A damn fine novel...haunting and evocative and immersive." (George R R Martin, author of A Game of Thrones)

Masterful

I absolutely loved this. Beautiful prose, complex and memorable characters, a gripping plot. A highly original structure that doesn’t not detract from the joy of immersing yourself in the story. The only very small downside was that the performer’s Australian / Scottish / Newcastle accents were frankly absurd, but luckily those are very minor characters! Overall, the voice was lovely to listen to.

Compelling

Great story, interesting narrative structure. Narration was fine but Australian and Northern English accents hilariously bad. Suggest the actor stick to natural accent 😊

dull never really gets going

Its a slow meandering story with characters I couldn't really care about. There doesn't appear to be a plot just accounts of people that have a loose association with each other.