The Glass Hotel

A Novel

By: Emily St. John Mandel

Narrated by: Dylan Moore

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's Summary

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 listeners 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.

"Compulsively readable." (Chicago Review of Books)

©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)

Not a mystery

I was excited to listen to the newest Emily St. John Mandel novel and downloaded it on release day. I did not read any reviews, not wanting to spoil the story. However, in the process of buying it, I noticed it was classified as Mystery, Psychological . Hmmm. Yes, I enjoyed the book, not as much as Station Eleven, but still enjoyed it. Call it Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction or plain Fiction, but not Mystery.

Don't waste your time and money

This was the most confusing, most ridiculous book I have ever tried to listen to... The story kept jumping from one Era to another. It was much like time travel and very boring.
This author definitely had to be in her own world to write something as bad as this.
I wouldn't recommend this piece of junk to anyone...

I Fail to Care

The writing is good. The narration is fine. The story sucks. It drags on way too long about the ponzi scheme and ultimately isn’t a story I care about. Too many characters and frayed story ends to be cohesive.

tedious slog

I tried to get through this....and in the beginning I thought a story might develop but the characters were all unsympathetic and the material based on decades old crises like y2k and Madoff type scandals. There were endless back stories about insignificant characters. Maybe it's because we're living through a real crisis now that I just don't see the point of this book.

Beautiful

A beautiful, haunting book with characters that will live with you long past the end credits.
I loved every second of it.

Enthralling

Just as wonderful as Station Eleven. Graceful, flowing prose, a timely and perhaps even prescient story. The characters aren't perfect, but they are flawed and realistic. The seemingly random pieces of the plot mostly connect by the end. And I really like this narrator ! Audible, give her more to narrate !

Great tale. Told well

I got this book after enjoying Mandel’s Station Eleven, which was recommended as relevant during Covid-19 lockdown. The Glass Hotel is even better. Love the characters’ details, Mandel captures the essence of class divide well. Moore’s voice is great. Going to search other books she narrated.

Kudos!

Excellent. Superbly written, wonderfully performed. Liked Station 19 when I read it, LOVED The Glass Hotel!

Enjoyable Listen

If you looking for the Ponzi scheme as the main story. This may not be the story for you. It is mainly about group of people and there lives they lead. If you like Ann Patchett stories especially The Commonwealth you probably like this also. They are similar and yet very different. Lastly the narrator did a good job on this book.

interesting but not riveting

loved Station Eleven but this book is a disappointment. none of the characters are particularly heroic or pleasant. no one to root for.