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The Glass Hotel: The Haunting Novel from the Author of Station Eleven Kindle Edition
From the author of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel is the story of the lives caught up in two very different tragedies: a woman disappearing from a container ship, and a massive Ponzi scheme imploding in New York.
'Terrific' – Sunday Times
'Elegant, haunting' – The Times
'A damn fine novel . . . evocative and immersive' – George R. R. Martin
Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the exclusive Hotel Caiette. When New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis walks into the hotel and hands her his card, it is the beginning of their life together.
That same night, 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, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core.
When Alkaitis's investment fund is revealed to be a Ponzi scheme, Leon loses his retirement savings in the fallout, but Vincent seemingly walks away unscathed. Until, a decade later, she disappears from the deck of one of Leon's ships . . .
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication date30 April 2020
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size3269 KB
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From the Publisher
Product description
Review
I've waited five long years for this - and it was absolutely worth it.
In this stunning and meandering story full of beautiful prose ... Set in Vancouver Island's dazzling surroundings, this is an extraordinary read.
Deeply imagined, philosophically profound . . . The Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its characters continually on the run . . . Richly satisfying . . . The Glass Hotel is ultimately as immersive a reading experience as its predecessor [Station Eleven], finding all the necessary imaginative depth within the more realistic confines of its world . . . Revolutionary. -- Ruth Franklin ― The Atlantic
A beguiling tale about skewed morals, reckless lives and necessary means of escape. -- The Economist
The question of what is real―be it love, money, place or memory―has always been at the heart of Ms. Mandel’s fiction... Her narratives snake their way across treacherous, shifting terrain. Certainties are blurred, truth becomes malleable and in The Glass Hotel the con man thrives... Lyrical, hypnotic images... suspend us in a kind of hallucinatory present where every detail is sharply defined yet queasily unreliable. A sense of unease thickens... Ms. Mandel invites us to observe her characters from a distance even as we enter their lives, a feat she achieves with remarkable skill. And if the result is a sense not only of detachment but also of desolation, then maybe that’s the point. -- Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
A fascinating and affecting read -- Stylist
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
A damn fine novel . . . she keeps me turning pages . . . haunting and evocative and immersive . . . I guess you can say I am a big Emily St. John Mandel fanboy. I look forward to whatever she writes next. -- George R R Martin
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
A mysterious and delicate book . . . The Glass Hotel beautifully depicts the many lives impacted by the collapse of an ambitious Ponzi scheme ― Elle Magazine (USA)
No one can create beautiful, enmeshed, startlingly clever worlds the way Mandel does. A new novel by her is a cause for enormous, tumultuous celebration -- Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
The Glass Hotel is as tightly constructed as a detective fiction, with its mysteries, apparently discrete events leading to revelations, dire consequences . . . a superb performance ― Sydney Morning Herald
The bestselling author of Station Eleven returns with this tale about the relationship between a New York financier, his waiter lover, a threatening note and a mysterious disappearance -- Times, Best books of 2020
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
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)
An eerie, compelling follow-up... not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie murder mystery or haunted hotel ghost story... The novel’s ongoing sense of haunting extends well beyond its ghosts... The ghosts in The Glass Hotel are directly connected to its secrets and scandals, which mirror those of our time... Like all Mandel’s novels, The Glass Hotel is flawlessly constructed... The Glass Hotel declares the world to be as bleak as it is beautiful, just like this novel. -- Rebecca Steinitz, The Boston Globe
The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker... Freshly mysterious... Mandel is a consummate, almost profligate world builder. One superbly developed setting gives way to the next, as her attention winds from character to character, resting long enough to explore the peculiar mechanics of each life before slipping over to the next... That Mandel manages to cover so much, so deeply is the abiding mystery of this book. The 300 pages of The Glass Hotel work harder than most 600-page novels... The disappointment of leaving one story is immediately quelled by our fascination in the next... The complex, troubled people who inhabit Mandel’s novel are vexed and haunted by their failings, driven to create ever more pleasant reflections of themselves in the glass. -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Review
Deeply imagined, philosophically profound . . . The Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its characters continually on the run . . . Richly satisfying . . . The Glass Hotel is ultimately as immersive a reading experience as its predecessor [Station Eleven], finding all the necessary imaginative depth within the more realistic confines of its world . . . Revolutionary. -- Ruth Franklin ― The Atlantic
A fascinating and affecting read -- Stylist
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
An eerie, compelling follow-up... not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie murder mystery or haunted hotel ghost story... The novel’s ongoing sense of haunting extends well beyond its ghosts... The ghosts in The Glass Hotel are directly connected to its secrets and scandals, which mirror those of our time... Like all Mandel’s novels, The Glass Hotel is flawlessly constructed... The Glass Hotel declares the world to be as bleak as it is beautiful, just like this novel. -- Rebecca Steinitz, The Boston Globe
A beguiling tale about skewed morals, reckless lives and necessary means of escape. -- The Economist
I've waited five long years for this - and it was absolutely worth it.
In this stunning and meandering story full of beautiful prose ... Set in Vancouver Island's dazzling surroundings, this is an extraordinary read.
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
The Glass Hotel is as tightly constructed as a detective fiction, with its mysteries, apparently discrete events leading to revelations, dire consequences . . . a superb performance ― Sydney Morning Herald
The bestselling author of Station Eleven returns with this tale about the relationship between a New York financier, his waiter lover, a threatening note and a mysterious disappearance -- Times, Best books of 2020
A damn fine novel . . . she keeps me turning pages . . . haunting and evocative and immersive . . . I guess you can say I am a big Emily St. John Mandel fanboy. I look forward to whatever she writes next. -- George R R Martin
No one can create beautiful, enmeshed, startlingly clever worlds the way Mandel does. A new novel by her is a cause for enormous, tumultuous celebration -- Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
Beautifully written and compelling, it will find its way straight to your heart. -- Red
A mysterious and delicate book . . . The Glass Hotel beautifully depicts the many lives impacted by the collapse of an ambitious Ponzi scheme ― Elle Magazine (USA)
The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker... Freshly mysterious... Mandel is a consummate, almost profligate world builder. One superbly developed setting gives way to the next, as her attention winds from character to character, resting long enough to explore the peculiar mechanics of each life before slipping over to the next... That Mandel manages to cover so much, so deeply is the abiding mystery of this book. The 300 pages of The Glass Hotel work harder than most 600-page novels... The disappointment of leaving one story is immediately quelled by our fascination in the next... The complex, troubled people who inhabit Mandel’s novel are vexed and haunted by their failings, driven to create ever more pleasant reflections of themselves in the glass. -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
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
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)
From the Back Cover
‘A damn fine novel . . . haunting and evocative and immersive’ George R. R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones
‘A perfect post-lockdown read . . . Mandel is a terrific storyteller’ Sunday Times
‘Elegant . . . beguiling’ Guardian
Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the exclusive Hotel Caiette. When New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis walks into the hotel and hands her his card, it is the beginning of their life together.
That same night, 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 words from the bar and is shaken to his core.
When Alkaitis's seemingly successful investment fund is revealed to be a Ponzi scheme, Leon loses his retirement savings in the fallout, but Vincent seemingly walks away unscathed. Until, a decade later, she disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship . . .
‘Fascinating and affecting’ Stylist
‘A beguiling tale about skewed morals and reckless lives . . . immersive’ The Economist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Leon Prevant left the lobby at four-thirty a.m., climbed the stairs to his room, and crept into the bed, where his wife was sleeping. Marie didn’t wake up. He’d purposefully drunk one whiskey too many with the thought that this might make it possible to fall asleep, but it was as if the graffiti had opened a crack in the night, through which all his fears flooded in. If pressed he might have admitted to Marie that he was worried about money, but worried wasn’t strong enough. Leon was afraid.
A colleague had told him this place was extraordinary, so he’d booked an extremely expensive room as an anniversary surprise for his wife. His colleague was right, he’d decided immediately. There were fishing and kayaking expeditions, guided hikes into wilderness, live music in the lobby, spectacular food, a wooded path that opened into a forest glade with an outdoor bar and lanterns hung from trees, a heated pool overlooking the tranquil waters of the sound.
“It’s heavenly,” Marie said on their first night.
“I’m inclined to agree.”
He’d sprung for a room with a hot tub on the terrace, and that first night they were out there for at least an hour, sipping champagne with a cool breeze in their faces, the sun setting over the water in a postcard kind of way. He kissed her and tried to convince himself to relax. But relaxation was difficult, because a week after he’d booked this extravagant room and told his wife about it, he’d begun to hear rumors of a pending merger.
Leon had survived two mergers and a reorganization, but when he heard the first whispers of this latest restructuring, he was struck by a certainty so strong that it felt like true knowledge: he was going to lose his job. He was fifty-eight years old. He was senior enough to be expensive, and close enough to retirement to be let go without weighing too heavily on anyone’s conscience. There was no part of his job that couldn’t be performed by younger executives who made less money than he did. Since hearing of the merger he’d lived whole hours without thinking about it, but the nights were harder than the days. He and Marie had just bought a house in South Florida, which they planned to rent out until he retired, with the idea of eventually fleeing New York winters and New York taxes. This seemed to him to be a new beginning, but they’d spent more money on the house than they’d meant to, he had never been very good at saving, and he was aware that he had much less in his retirement accounts than he should. It was six-thirty in the morning before he fell into a fitful sleep.
4
When Walter returned to the lobby the following evening, Leon Prevant was eating dinner at the bar with Jonathan Alkaitis. They’d met a little earlier, in what seemed at the time like a coincidental manner and seemed later like a trap. Leon had been at the bar, eating a salmon burger, alone because Marie was lying down upstairs with a headache. Alkaitis, who was drinking a pint of Guinness two stools down, struck up a conversation with the bartender and then expanded the conversation to include Leon. They were talking about Caiette, which, as it happened, Jonathan Alkaitis knew something about. “I actually own this property,” he said to Leon, almost apologetically. “It’s hard to get to, but that’s what I like about it.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Leon said. He was always looking for conversations, and it was a pleasure to think about something—anything!—other than financial insolvency and unemployment for a moment. “Do you own other hotels?”
“Just the one. I mostly work in finance.” Alkaitis had a couple of businesses in New York, he said, both of which involved investing other people’s money in the stock market for them. He wasn’t really taking on new clients these days, but he did on occasion make an exception.
The thing about Alkaitis, a woman from Philadelphia wrote some years later, in a victim impact statement that she read aloud at Alkaitis’s sentencing hearing, is he made you feel like you were joining a secret club. There was truth in this, Leon had to admit, when he read the transcript, but the other part of the equation was the man himself. What Alkaitis had was presence. He had a voice made for late-night radio, warm and reassuring. He radiated calm. He was a man utterly without bluster, confident but not arrogant, quick to smile at jokes. A steady, low-key, intelligent person, much more interested in listening than in talking about himself. He had that trick—and it was a trick, Leon realized later—of appearing utterly indifferent to what anyone thought of him, and in so doing provoking the opposite anxiety in other people: What does Alkaitis think of me? Later, in the years that he spent replaying this particular evening, Leon remembered a certain desire to impress him.
“This is slightly embarrassing,” Alkaitis said that night, when they’d left the bar and retired to a quieter corner of the lobby to discuss investments, “but you said you’re in shipping, and I real- ized as you said it that I’ve only the dimmest idea of what that actually means.”
Leon smiled. “You’re not alone in that. It’s a largely invisible industry, but nearly everything you’ve ever bought traveled over the water.”
“My made-in-China headphones, and whatnot.”
“Sure, yes, there’s an obvious one, but I really mean almost everything. Everything on and around us. Your socks. Our shoes. My aftershave. This glass in my hand. I could keep going, but I’ll spare you.”
“I’m embarrassed to admit that I never thought about it,” Jonathan said.
“No one does. You go to the store, you buy a banana, you don’t think about the men who piloted the banana through the Panama Canal. Why would you?” Easy now, he told himself. He was aware of a weakness for rhapsodizing on his industry at excessive length. “I have colleagues who resent the general public’s ignorance of the industry, but I think the fact that you don’t have to think about it proves that the whole system works.”
“The banana arrives on schedule.” Jonathan sipped his drink. “You must develop a kind of sixth sense. Here you are in the world, surrounded by all these objects that arrived by ship. You ever find it distracting, thinking about all those shipping routes, all those points of origin?”
“You’re only the second person I’ve ever met who guessed that,” Leon said.
The other was a psychic, a college friend of Marie’s who’d come into Toronto from Santa Fe, back when Leon was still based in Toronto, and the three of them had had dinner down- town at Saint Tropez, Marie’s favorite restaurant in their Toronto years. The psychic—Clarissa, he remembered now— was friendly and warm. He liked her immediately. He had an impression that psychics must very often be exploited by their friends and passing acquaintances, an impression not dispelled by Marie’s reminiscences about all the times she’d asked Clarissa for free advice, so over the course of the evening Leon went elaborately out of his way to avoid asking her anything, until finally, over dessert, curiosity overtook him: Was it ever deafening, he asked her, being in a crowded room? Was it like being in a room filled with radios tuned to overlapping frequencies, a clamor of voices broadcasting the mundane or horrifying details of dozens of lives? Clarissa smiled. “It’s like this,” she said, gesturing at the room around them, “it’s like being in a crowded restaurant. You can tune in to the conversation at the next table, or you can let that become background noise. Like the way you see shipping,” she said, and this remained in memory as one of the most delightful conversations Leon had ever had, because he’d never talked with anyone about the way he could tune in and out of shipping, like turning a dial on a radio. When he glanced across the table at Marie, for example: he could see the woman he loved, or he could shift frequencies and see the dress made in the U.K., the shoes made in China, the Italian leather handbag, or shift even further and see the Neptune-Avramidis shipping routes lit up on the map: the dress via Westbound Trans-Atlantic Route 3, the shoes via either the Trans-Pacific Eastbound 7 or the Shanghai–Los Angeles Eastbound Express, etc. Or further still, into the kind of language he’d never speak aloud, not even to Marie: there are tens of thousands of ships at sea at any given moment and he liked to imagine each one as a point of light, converging into rivers of electric brilliance over the night oceans, flowing through the narrow channels of the Suez and Panama Canals, the Strait of Gibraltar, around the edges of continents and out into the oceans, an unceasing movement that drove countries, a secret world that he loved so much.
When Walter walked within earshot of Leon Prevant and Jonathan Alkaitis, some time later, the conversation had shifted from Leon’s work to Alkaitis’s, from shipping to investment strategies. Walter understood none of it. Finance wasn’t his world. He didn’t speak the language. Someone on the day shift had covered the graffiti on the glass with reflective tape, an odd silvery streak of mirror on the darkened window. Two American actors were eating dinner at the bar.
“He left his first wife for her,” Larry said, nodding at them.
“Oh?” said Walter, who could not possibly have cared less. Twenty years of working in high-end hotels had cured him of any interest in celebrity. “I wanted to ask you,” he said, “just between the two of us, does the new guy seem a little off to you?”
Larry glanced theatrically over his shoulder and around the lobby, but Paul was elsewhere, mopping the corridor behind Reception in the heart of the house.
“Maybe a little depressed, is all,” Larry said. “Not the most sparkling personality I’ve ever come across.”
“Did he ask you about arriving guests last night?”
“How’d you know? Yeah, asked me when Jonathan Alkaitis was arriving.”
“And you told him ...?”
“Well, you know my eyesight’s not great, and I’d only just come on shift. So I told him I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought the guy drinking whiskey in the lobby was Alkaitis. Didn’t realize my mistake till later. Why?” Larry was a reasonably discreet man, but on the other hand, the staff lived together in the same building in the woods and gossip was a kind of black-market currency.
“No reason.”
“Come on.”
“I’ll tell you later.” Walter still didn’t understand the motive, as he walked back toward Reception, but there was no doubt in his mind that Paul had committed the act. He glanced around the lobby, but no one seemed to require his attention at that moment, so he slipped through the staff door behind the reception desk. Paul was cleaning the dark window at the end of the hall.
“Paul.”
The night houseman stopped what he was doing, and in his expression, Walter knew that he’d been correct in his suspicions. Paul had a hunted look.
“Where’d you get the acid marker?” Walter asked. “Is that something you can just buy at a hardware store, or did you have to make it yourself?”
“What are you talking about?” But Paul was a terrible liar. His voice had gone up half an octave.
“Why did you want Jonathan Alkaitis to see that disgusting message?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This place means something to me,” Walter said. “Seeing it defaced like that . . .” It was the like that that bothered him the most, the utter vileness of the message on the glass, but he didn’t know how to explain this to Paul without opening a door into his personal life, and the thought of revealing anything remotely personal to this shiftless little creep was untenable. He couldn’t finish the sentence. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to give you an opportunity,” he said. “Pack up your things and leave on the first boat, and we don’t have to get the police involved.”
“I’m sorry.” Paul’s voice was a whisper. “I just—”
“You just thought you’d deface a hotel window, for the sake of delivering the most vicious, the most deranged—” Walter was sweating. “Why did you even do it?” But Paul had the furtive look of a boy searching for a plausible story, and Walter couldn’t stand to listen to another lie that night. “Look, just go,” he said. “I don’t care why you did it. I don’t want to look at you anymore. Put the cleaning supplies away, go back to your room, pack your bags, and tell Melissa that you want a ride to Grace Harbour as quickly as possible. If you’re still here at nine a.m., I’ll go to Raphael.”
“You don’t understand,” Paul said. “I’ve got all this debt—”
“If you needed the job that badly,” Walter said, “you probably shouldn’t have defaced the window.”
“You can’t even swallow broken glass.”
“What?”
“I mean it’s actually physically impossible.”
“Seriously? That’s your defense?”
Paul flushed and looked away.
“Did you ever think of your sister in all of this?” Walter asked. “She got you the job interview here, didn’t she?”
“Vincent had nothing to do with this.”
“Are you going to leave? I’m in a generous mood and I don’t want to embarrass your sister, so I’m giving you a clean exit here, but if you’d prefer a criminal record, then by all means . . .”
“No, I’ll go.” Paul looked down at the cleaning supplies in his hands, as if unsure how they’d landed there. “I’m sorry.”
“You should go pack before I change my mind.”
“Thank you,” Paul said.
5
But the horror of it. Why don’t you swallow broken glass. Why don’t you die. Why don’t you cast everyone who loves you into perdition. He was thinking about his friend Rob again, forever sixteen, thinking about Rob’s mother’s face at the funeral. Walter sleep-walked through the rest of his shift and stayed up late to meet with Raphael in the morning. As he passed through the lobby at eight a.m., up past his bedtime and desperate for sleep, he caught sight of Paul down at the end of the pier, loading his duffel bags into the boat.
“Good morning,” Raphael said when Walter looked into his office. He was bright-eyed and freshly shaved. He and Walter lived in the same building, but in opposite time zones.
“I just saw Paul getting on the boat with his worldly belongings,” Walter said.
Raphael sighed. “I don’t know what happened. He came in here this morning with an incoherent story about how much he misses Vancouver, when the kid practically begged me for a change of scenery three months back.”
“He gave no reason?”
“None. We’ll start interviewing again. Anything else?” Raphael asked, and Walter, his defenses weakened by exhaustion, understood for the first time that Raphael didn’t like him very much. The realization landed with a sad little thud.
“No,” he said, “thank you. I’ll leave you to it.” On the walk back to the staff lodge, he found himself wishing that he’d been less angry when he’d spoken with Paul. All these hours later, he was beginning to wonder if he’d missed the point: when Paul said he had debts, did he mean that he needed the job at the hotel, or was he saying that someone had paid him to write the message on the glass? Because none of it actually made sense. It seemed obvious that Paul’s message was directed at Alkaitis, but what could Alkaitis possibly mean to him?
Leon Prevant and his wife departed that morning, followed two days later by Jonathan Alkaitis. When Walter came in for his shift on the night of Alkaitis’s departure, Khalil was working the bar, although it wasn’t his usual night: Vincent, he said, had taken a sudden vacation. A day later she called Raphael from Vancouver and told him she’d decided not to come back to the hotel, so someone from Housekeeping boxed up her belongings and put them in storage at the back of the laundry room.
The panel of glass was replaced at enormous expense, and the graffiti receded into memory. Spring passed into summer and then the beautiful chaos of the high season, the lobby crowded every night and a temperamental jazz quartet causing drama in the staff lodge when they weren’t delighting the guests, the quartet alternating with a pianist whose marijuana habit was tolerated because he could seemingly play any song ever written, the hotel fully booked and the staff almost doubled, Melissa piloting the boat back and forth to Grace Harbour all day and late into the evening.
Summer faded into autumn, then the quiet and the dark of the winter months, the rainstorms more frequent, the hotel half- empty, the staff quarters growing quiet with the departure of the seasonal workers. Walter slept through the days and arrived at his shift in the early evenings—the pleasure of long nights in the silent lobby, Larry by the door, Khalil at the bar, storms descend- ing and rising throughout the night—and sometimes joined his colleagues for a meal that was dinner for the night shift and breakfast for the day people, shared a few drinks sometimes with the kitchen staff, listened to jazz alone in his apartment, went for walks in and out of Caiette, ordered books in the mail that he read when he woke in the late afternoons.
On a stormy night in spring, Ella Kaspersky checked in. She was a regular at the hotel, a businesswoman from Chicago who liked to come here to escape “all the noise,” as she put it, a guest who was mostly notable because Jonathan Alkaitis had made it clear that he didn’t want to see her. Walter had no idea why Alkaitis was avoiding Kaspersky and frankly didn’t want to know, but when she arrived he did his customary check to make sure Alkaitis hadn’t made a last-minute booking. Alkaitis hadn’t visited the hotel in some time, he realized, longer than his usual interval between visits. When the lobby was quiet at two a.m., he ran a Google search on Alkaitis and found images from a recent charity fund-raiser, Alkaitis beaming in a tuxedo with a younger woman on his arm. She looked very familiar.
Walter enlarged the photo. The woman was Vincent. A gloss- ier version, with an expensive haircut and professional-grade makeup, but it was unmistakably her. She was wearing a metal- lic gown that must have cost about what she’d made in a month as a bartender here. The caption read Jonathan Alkaitis with his wife, Vincent.
Walter looked up from the screen, into the silent lobby. Nothing in his life had changed in the year since Vincent’s departure, but this was by his own design and his own desire. Khalil, now the full-time night bartender, was chatting with a couple who’d just arrived. Larry stood by the door with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes half-closed. Walter abandoned his post and walked out into the April night. He hoped Vincent was happy in that foreign country, in whatever strange new life she’d found for herself. He tried to imagine what it might be like to step into Jonathan Alkaitis’s life—the money, the houses, the private jet—but it was all incomprehensible to him. The night was clear and cold, moonless but the blaze of stars was over- whelming. Walter wouldn’t have imagined, in his previous life in downtown Toronto, that he’d fall in love with a place where the stars were so bright that he could see his shadow on a night with no moon. He wanted nothing that he didn’t already have.
But when he turned back to the hotel he was blindsided by the memory of the words written on the window a year ago, Why don’t you swallow broken glass, the whole unsettling mystery of it. The forest was a mass of undifferentiated shadow. He folded his arms against the chill and returned to the warmth and light of the lobby.
Product details
- ASIN : B0811YP777
- Publisher : Picador (30 April 2020)
- Language : English
- File size : 3269 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 321 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 37,515 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 205 in Ghost Horror
- 224 in Women's Fantasy Fiction
- 284 in Legal Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- Customer reviews:
About the author
EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL is the author of six novels, including Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her work has been translated into thirty-two languages. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
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Customers find the book a joy to read with an interesting plot and clever intertwining of storylines. They praise the writing quality as sublime, beautifully written, and subtly done. The characters are complex and well-drawn, with their respective emotions. Many describe the book as beautiful and dreamy. However, some feel the pacing is not brilliant and underwhelming. There are mixed opinions on the structure, with some finding it clever and well-managed, while others think it's dull and underwhelming, like Station Eleven.
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Customers enjoy the book's readability. They find it engaging, with a gentle and atmospheric writing style that keeps them hooked. The characters are believable and the plot is intriguing.
"...The characters are all finely drawn, and very plausible, with their respective emotions (and especially their resentments against each other) being..." Read more
"Good read and well written and whilst not as good as sea of tranquility or station 11 Its a great book from a brilliant author." Read more
"...so many publications and yes, the way it's written is beautiful, almost lyrical but it just didn't work for me...." Read more
"...And a great ending. Loved this book and highly recommend it for a really good read." Read more
Customers find the plot interesting and complex. They appreciate the clever intertwining of storylines and the first chapter that hooks their attention. The book is described as unusual and fascinating, with a surprising ending.
"...As always with her books, there is a very cleverly managed interlacing of storylines...." Read more
"...Complex and multidimensional characters. Fascinating reading about Ponzi schemes and their impact on people and the ease with which people can be..." Read more
"This was such a beautifully written book! The first chapter is very clever and hooked my attention immediately...." Read more
"Interesting but muddled. Very difficult to keep hold of all the characters and,in the end, to care much about them" Read more
Customers praise the writing quality. They find it readable, beautifully written, and subtle. The characters are good, and the author is described as one of the best writers around.
"Good read and well written and whilst not as good as sea of tranquility or station 11 Its a great book from a brilliant author." Read more
"I liked everything about The Glass Hotel. Very easy to read and you just don’t want to put it down. Complex and multidimensional characters...." Read more
"This was such a beautifully written book! The first chapter is very clever and hooked my attention immediately...." Read more
"...Beautifully written." Read more
Customers find the book's characters well-developed and realistic. They appreciate the author's skillful transitions between different characters and their lives.
"...The characters are all finely drawn, and very plausible, with their respective emotions (and especially their resentments against each other) being..." Read more
"...Complex and multidimensional characters...." Read more
"...The characters were intriguing and well-developed, but not very likeable, except Vincent, who grew on me. I loved the settings." Read more
"...It felt almost self published - the characters weren't well rounded enough, I couldn't picture them in my head at all and that for me is an..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's beauty. They find the writing style beautiful and dreamlike. The nature of British Columbia is also mentioned as beautiful.
"...it recommended in so many publications and yes, the way it's written is beautiful, almost lyrical but it just didn't work for me...." Read more
"I enjoyed this book for the story and the sheer exquisiteness and unique talent of its writing...." Read more
"...the endless possibilities and, last but not least, the beautiful nature of British Columbia...." Read more
"...of view and a recursive timeline, but given that it is an elegantly composed book...." Read more
Customers find the book haunting and thought-provoking. They describe the characters as surreal, unsettling, and unforgettable. The story is described as plausible with its different emotions.
"...characters are all finely drawn, and very plausible, with their respective emotions (and especially their resentments against each other) being..." Read more
"Beautifully written, with many haunting (no pun intended) descriptions of diverse places, situations, and interactions between characters almost all..." Read more
"...the impossible and yet so possible connections, the hauntings as gentle as a baby's breath, the life we take for granted, the endless..." Read more
"...It has in common with Station Eleven that eerie feeling that makes the hair on the back of your neck and wonder what is coming next...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's structure. Some find it perfect and well-woven, with a story that builds on multiple backdrops. Others mention poor quality publishing and characters not being fully developed.
"...moves between different characters and their lives and weaves them all together so well. If you are a fan of her work I would recommend it" Read more
"...It felt almost self published - the characters weren't well rounded enough, I couldn't picture them in my head at all and that for me is an..." Read more
"...An awesome novel, perfect in its structure and characterisation, surreal, unsettling, unforgettable. Just read it!" Read more
"...The plot subtly twists and turns and comes together beautifully...." Read more
Customers find the pacing of the book slow. They say it's not as good as Station Eleven and find the characters unlikable.
"...The characters were intriguing and well-developed, but not very likeable, except Vincent, who grew on me. I loved the settings." Read more
"...manages to pull off the dubious achievement of being both clever and dull." Read more
"...I thought it was good, but not brilliant. It fell a bit flat for me." Read more
"I wouldn’t say this is an awful book but it is underwhelming, I kept waiting for something to happen that would make the whole story worth telling,..." Read more
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Top reviews from United Kingdom
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 June 2020Emily St John Mandel’s last novel was the excellent Station Eleven, which completely enthralled me after I picked up by chance while on holiday. I have, therefore, been eagerly awaiting her next novel, although there is always the associated worry that the new one might not match up to my high expectations. Well, there were no issues on that front. It may have been six years since Station Eleven was published, but it was well worth the wait.
I had been struck by the fact that while her previous four novels had all seemed very good, they were also markedly different from each other, as if she is determined to defy genre. That applies equally to the Glass Hotel which combines a number of different themes, and crosses several genres.
The principal character is Vincent, a young woman whom (apart from a very brief opening chapter) we first encounter as a troubled teenager in the early 1990s. Her mother had disappeared, presumed drowned in the seas off Vancouver Island. We also meet Paul, her older half-brother, who has his own challenges, principally in the form of substance abuse.
The story follows Paul as he studies finance at the University of Toronto (although really, he just wants to write and play music). After a disastrous encounter with a rock band that is on the cusp of breaking through, Paul almost becomes a recluse, but hooks up again with Vincent and her best friend Melissa to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium.
Five years later, Vincent is established as a bar attendant in a luxurious hotel on the remote island in British Columbia where she had grown up. Paul, following one of his periods of detox and rehab, has just returned there, and is also working at the hotel. Late one night, one of the few guests is suffering insomnia, and spends most of the night in the bar, sitting by the Hotel’s signature picture window. Having briefly left his seat, he returns to find that someone has written a threatening message on the glass. It soon becomes apparent that the ‘someone’ is Paul, and his employment there ends that night.
Vincent’s own employment at the hotel ends a couple of nights later when she leaves in company with a wealthy guest, who is, as it happens, its owner. He is head of a successful finance house, and within weeks, they are living together as husband and wife. Vincent does her best to fit in with life in the exalted circles in which she now moves, but never relinquishes her grasp on the realities of life. That is just as well, because within a few years that new lifestyle will come to an end in the most dramatic manner.
The characters are all finely drawn, and very plausible, with their respective emotions (and especially their resentments against each other) being completely convincing. As always with her books, there is a very cleverly managed interlacing of storylines. What goes around definitely seems to come around, but this does not hamper the reader’s complete acceptance of the story.
This book might not be quite as spectacular in its impact as Station Eleven, but it is just as powerful and haunting.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 December 2023Good read and well written and whilst not as good as sea of tranquility or station 11 Its a great book from a brilliant author.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 June 2020I wanted to love this book, I really did!
I purchased it as I'd seen it recommended in so many publications and yes, the way it's written is beautiful, almost lyrical but it just didn't work for me.
It felt almost self published - the characters weren't well rounded enough, I couldn't picture them in my head at all and that for me is an important part of reading! It's a very meandering, melancholy tale and I admire anyone that can write a novel but I won't be hurrying to believe the hype next time...
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 July 2024I liked everything about The Glass Hotel. Very easy to read and you just don’t want to put it down. Complex and multidimensional characters. Fascinating reading about Ponzi schemes and their impact on people and the ease with which people can be corrupted. And a great ending. Loved this book and highly recommend it for a really good read.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2022This was such a beautifully written book! The first chapter is very clever and hooked my attention immediately. With the chapters addressing different events in different times, I was a little confused to begin with, however it soon became apparent that the author was cleverly piecing the story puzzle together. I enjoyed the way the book used the butterfly effect throughout (a small change in one place can cause potentially catastrophic and unpredictable changes elsewhere – ripple effects). Completely absorbing and interesting.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 December 2024I loved this novel. It has more moving pieces than are obvious at first glance. And it's also a moving story about escaping the financial grind only to discover things are not what they seem, and being returned to the nothing you started with. Beautifully written.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 May 2020I didn't know what to expect of this book, especially after the spectacular Station Eleven, and was glad to see it was very different. It took a few chapters to get into, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. The characters were intriguing and well-developed, but not very likeable, except Vincent, who grew on me. I loved the settings.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 October 2024And now working my way through her catalogue which is also fantastic
Top reviews from other countries
- Manor Z.Reviewed in the United States on 27 May 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Storytelling and Rich Character Development in Glass Hotel
"Glass Hotel" by Emily St. John Mandel is an extraordinary novel that skillfully weaves together themes of illusion, deception, and the fragility of human connections. From the very first page, Mandel captivates the reader with her exquisite prose and masterful storytelling.
One of the standout features of this novel is the seamless way in which Mandel navigates through different timelines and locations. Her narrative effortlessly transitions between the remote wilderness of Vancouver Island, the bustling streets of Manhattan, and the eerie, surreal setting of a luxury hotel. This fluid movement not only enhances the story's richness but also adds depth to the characters' experiences and emotions, making the reader feel intimately connected to their journeys.
The character development in "Glass Hotel" is truly remarkable. Mandel has a rare talent for creating complex, multifaceted characters who are both deeply flawed and profoundly human. Vincent, the enigmatic bartender turned trophy wife, is a particularly compelling protagonist. Her evolution throughout the novel is handled with great sensitivity and insight, making her both relatable and unforgettable. Likewise, Jonathan Alkaitis, the financier whose Ponzi scheme sets the plot in motion, is portrayed with a nuanced blend of charisma and moral ambiguity.
Each character's arc is intricately linked with the central themes of the novel, and Mandel's exploration of their inner lives is both poignant and thought-provoking. The secondary characters, too, are vividly drawn and contribute significantly to the novel's immersive quality.
"Glass Hotel" is a testament to Emily St. John Mandel's extraordinary ability to craft a narrative that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant. Her deft handling of time and place, combined with her deep empathy for her characters, makes this novel a compelling and unforgettable read. Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates literary fiction at its finest.
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on 15 August 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
A very imaginative and interesting plot with some great characters.
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Claudia WReviewed in Mexico on 23 September 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Cumplió
Tenía expectativas altas después de ver la serie de tv Station Eleven, que me pareció excelente. Antes de eso no conocía a la autora. Esta novela, aunque la historia me pareció menos interesante que Station Eleven, no me decepcionó en absoluto.
- Madhu dasReviewed in India on 24 May 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Intricate story
Loved the book! Emily has become one f my fav writers after Station 11
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GustavoReviewed in Brazil on 20 April 2021
3.0 out of 5 stars 2,5
Li o best seller Station eleven, que adorei, mas não gostei deste. Esperava algo diferente. Ou vc vai adorar ou vai detestar.