The Glass Hotel

To be honest, it was an interesting read and I kept wanting to read more, but after I finished reading the book, I got this meh vibe from it, not entirely satisfied with the story or the ending (that was already told in the first chapter, no secrets there). The book has this mysterious vibe about a place far off in British Columbia, Canada where everything is so remote and people living there have different kind of lives that we have, hence the curiosity that piqued my interest to pick up the book in the first place, but as I progressed, as we followed the lives of Paul and Vincent (brother and sister), their lives turned somewhat "ordinary" and it's become "just another drama novel".

4.5/5

Wow. Absolutely loved it. Every character was executed perfectly, it made a big impression on me and made me sympathise and question morals in a way I never had before.

Even better than Station Eleven. So many characters all developed beautifully and intertwined in a fascinating story. One of my favorite reads this year.

sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you. . . in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. — The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows A couple of memorable characters from Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven play important roles in The Glass Hotel. It was trippy to bump into them in this novel, with their lives unfolding in completely different ways, teasing my imagination with the questions about parallel universes and the power of choices and consequences. The word ‘sonder’ kept reverberating in my head — Emily St. John Mandel is not interested in just one life or a few, but in all of them, every one of them who can be ignored as an extra, a voice that usually drowns in a chorus, and she imagines a rich, complex life for each one of them. It’s incredible how a chapter called ‘The Office Chorus’ intended to sound like a collective voice still comes together like a braid, with each strand of story unique and universal, with each character becoming the protagonist for a short while. And how she makes me root for them, even when their moral centres are ever-shifting, and how she pushes the boundaries of my own empathy! It’s okay to feel impressionable while reading her novels because she makes me fall in love with this incorrigible humanity all over again. Resisting that is futile.

Really, really good. The prose was a notable step up from Station Eleven. Fun little tie ins to that book, too.

Greed looks different in every class structure.

A strange, absorbing read. Following it and it’s characters feels a lot like bobbing on the currents and waves of the ever-present oceans. Is it Station Eleven? No - but what is? It has the same ability to evoke atmosphere and draw you in though, and I loved reading it

i will read anything emily st john mandel writes and apparently that includes a ponzi scheme novel

While I wasn't in love with this book the way I am with Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel was still worth the read. I didn't get attached to these characters and I can't begin to tell you how boring I find the 2008 financial collapse, so the fact that I enjoyed this is really saying a lot. I just find Emily St. John Mandel's writing to be so lyrical and lovely. The structure is interesting here, too, shifting perspectives and jumping through time to reveal events and motivations with intention

I really, really enjoyed Station Eleven. I was a little hesitant to pick this one up because of the disappointed reviews I kept seeing and hearing, but I'll honestly say without a trace of doubt that I'm glad I read it. It's told nonsequentially, much like Station Eleven, which will give you that same feeling of having to piece together a puzzle. It also involves a world-ending event, albeit on a smaller, personal, financial sense than a global, everyone, pandemic sense, which was satisfying to piece together. Unfortunately the underlying themes of The Glass Hotel were less interesting to me than the themes of Station Eleven. Financial drama just doesn't get the same imagination cells firing for me as "survival is insufficient" from Station Eleven. I also didn't really like any of the characters from The Glass Hotel, because it's hard to feel connected with a Ponzi scheme operator, a trophy wife, or any of the others impacted by the event. I felt things about them, though, which still earns this book points from me. I also felt like the ending of this book was a little weak. I was disappointed to find out that (view spoiler)[the ghosts were actual ghosts, and not Jonathan's guilty conscience driving him a bit crazy (hide spoiler)]. You can spin the ending in a semi-satisfying way if you try hard enough, but I felt like it was a bit of a miss in tone from the rest of the book. I did enjoy my time with this book though, and if you like her writing style from Station Eleven, there's a lot to like from The Glass Hotel. Just don't go into it looking for Station Eleven 2.

Having read The Glass Hotel, Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility (again) over the course of a week, I think it's safe to say I've become a big fan of Emily St. John Mandel. Her prose just clicks for me. And I'm a sucker for shared universes, not unlike David Mitchell's oeuvre.

Wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but I feel like being generous, so. Man, I don't know if this is a good book or a merely OK book. I am in two minds about it really, because on the one hand it felt really deep in all the points it had about life, how everything/everyone is connected, death etc, but on the other hand, did it say anything about all these things? There are some novels that invest a lot in the idea of being deep, interestingly structured etc. and in the end you find out that it's really an idea, an ambition that couldn't be seen through in its entirety, and the interesting structure is more a gimmick than anything. The Glass Hotel had at its center the character of Vincent, and we move back and forth as well as all across in her life. We jump to, and back from all the people her life has touched, and this is meaningful, somehow. The Ponzi scheme is also some sort of (very obvious) comment about how everything and everyone is connected, and how disaster spreads. The titular glass hotel must be some kind of metaphor, because otherwise it feels kind of pointless... I mean, I did enjoy reading the book, but that's the way with some books - now that I think about it, I don't think about it in a really favorable light. I don't think it pulls it weight, and maybe that could be fixed by changing the last 10% of the book, and maybe not. (view spoiler)[ Note to myself for when I look back at what I wrote some years in the future: Vincent's mother dies in a canoe accident in a remote part of the British Columbia, but was it really a suicide? She moves to Toronto in high school, moves back to Caiette (?) in her early twenties to work at the titular hotel as a barmaid, is picked up by the owner of the hotel Jonathan something and transported into a life of wealth and luxury. But Jonathan was running a Ponzi scheme, and so all good things must come to an end. He is jailed, Vincent goes her own way, finds work as a cook on a transatlantic (?) ship, dies in an accident charged with sublimity when she goes overboard in a storm. She finds her mother waiting for her overlooking the waters of Caiette. (hide spoiler)]

Mandel’s writing is sublime. Glass Hotel isn’t about very much. And it’s also about some huge things - like how money (having it and not having it) can change a person, and the choices we make between taking “opportunities” or holding onto our integrity, and how our lives can impact each other’s in the most surprising ways… But the deep dive into the worlds of the characters kept drawing me in, and I couldn’t stop listening. I think Mandel was trying to do a bit too much in this (short) book, and I cared more about some of the characters than others, as a result. I wanted more of Vincent and Paul’s story, and less of some of the background characters. But it was still a stunning book.

give me quiet. give me forests and ocean and no roads. give me the walk to the village through the woods in summer, give me the sound of wind in the cedar branches, give me mist rising over the water, give me the view of green branches from the bathtub in the morning. give me a place with no people in it, because I will never fully trust another person again It's so hard to describe what this book is about, what happens in it, and why I liked it so much. It starts with graffiti in a hotel "why don't you swallow broken glass?" scrawled across a wall. The rest of the book is somewhat of a mystery, like trying to unravel gossip, infinite connections and moments and stories leading to the when and the why of those words scrawled on a glass hotel's wall. It's such an odd book, if you've read the authors previous book, Station Eleven - it's nothing like it at all, and yet a lot like it in other ways. I think Mandel has such an excellent ability to draw you into the world of a story, to make you care about characters and their lives. She writes such real people, not necessarily likeable or unlikeable but occupying some transient space between. I love how Mandel writes about and unravels the infinite connections that exist between people, and interrogates how these connections form the fabric of society. She also discusses wealth, privacy, morality and questions what we owe each other, as humans. It's hard to recommend this book because it's so singular and kind of bizarre. But if you liked Station Eleven for it's take on humanity, if you like character-driven books, if you like slowly unravelling mysteries and books where relationships are important, whether chance meetings or long term friendships, then I think you'll like this Thank you to Libro.fm for giving me an audiobook ARC of The Glass Hotel to review

"Money is a game he knew how to play. No, money is a country and he had the keys to the kingdom." Emily St. John Mandel is an amazing writer. She knows how to perfectly execute a plot and create an immersive environment. You can tell she puts a lot of thought and research into her books. The characters were detailed and well thought about, which isn't something I see in many books.* *Meaning, a lot of book characters are just named and have a certain role in the story but don't really have enough of a personality or backstory to fully like or resonate with them. This was the kind of book that is short and fast, but also incredibly slow. I don't know if it's just because of me, but it took so long to read. I think there was just a lot of information thrown at me about topics I either don't care about or know nothing about. But when the Ponzi scheme was discovered, I was entertained. Characters are the best part of books in my opinion. So when they are detailed and actually have personality, the story is 100x better. Getting the different views of each character was a bit confusing, but I found that most of it played out in the end. The timeline was also something that confused me but I think it was just the switching between views. I loved the use of the phrase "kingdom of money", because it describes the world perfectly. Emily gave us characters that have been in the kingdom of money for a long time while also giving us characters like Vincent and Mirella who were added later on, who didn't fully understand that side of the world. “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.” "...that's when I realized that money was its own country." One of my favorite parts of this novel was The Counterlife. It shows Jonathan struggling with incarceration, so much to the point where his reality seems to deflate around him, and he starts seeing his dead friends or clients. But not only was it Jonathan in this situation but Paul and Vincent as well. "But he sees them gazing into the distance and wonders where they are." "It isn't his fault that his days are so similar that he keeps sliding into memories, or into the counterlife, although it is troubling that his memories and the counterlife have started blurring together." There was also the portrayal of the Afterlife when Jonathan and Vincent visited each other in their "hallucinations." Perhaps that's all it was for Jonathan, but for Vincent... The words "why not" were mentioned many times in this novel. Those two simple words show so much of society. How everyone is willing to do anything because "why not?" as long as it benefits them. I love how the whole plot played out in the end.

Glass Hotel is by far the better book from Emily St. John Mandel. It weaves a complex story of family strife, creativity, and the losses in life, and the ways in which creative and sensitive souls try to survive through their mistakes. Centered around Vincent Smith, a character who reappears in Sea of Tranquility, Hotel traces the personal journeys and tumultuous relationships of Vincent, her common law husband Jonathan, and her half brother Paul. The characters' lives traipse in and out of meaning with fraught family histories, and the guilt and cheating associated with ego driven prestige, versus the woes of those attempting to succeed earnestly.  The tale plays out like a sadder, more Faulkner-esque version of other Ponzi parables, such as The Man Who Would Be Polka King (on netflix), featuring hints at some of the more famous genre elements of Mandel’s other work.

Told through multiple characters and viewpoints, the book starts in the same small Canadian island hamlet that is the focus of Sea of Tranquility’s main mystery. In this story however, the community of Caiette is less of a McGuffin, and more a starting point for this collection of lost souls, who all at one point or another work at Hotel Caiette.  Mandel treads a familiar theme of multiple characters making sense of central tragic events, and how they came to be. Vincent’s half-brother accidentally kills an acquaintance with bad drugs, and it informs his creative practice for the rest of his life. Vincent processes her mother’s mysterious death with her artwork, and this uncertainty drives a survival based wanderlust, leading her eventually to the comfortable life with her husband. Vincent’s sympathetic nouveau riche grifter husband/sugar daddy processes his brother's death throughout his life, fomenting his desire for success. One of Mandel’s more compelling storytelling idiosyncrasies is the ways in which these characters describe these parts of their lives in back and forth manner, lending the plot the air of a story being told by a friend who working something out, leading to narrative short hands for specific time-frames, such as “the land of the rich” AKA, when Vincent was a trophy wife.

The bulk of the book's narrative concerns the aftermath and impact of a fictional 2008 Ponzi scheme, playing out in the shadow of the economic collapse of the same period, orchestrated by Vinent’s husband, Jonathan Alkaitis. Mandel conducts a series of Roshoman style character studies of the different associates, friends and enemies of Alkaitis, as well as those of Vincent and Paul, from almost every conceivable angle, and multiple points in the Ponzi schemes timeline. An exhaustive amount of detail is given to this aspect of the narrative, to the levels of willful disbelief that its participants engage in order to delude themselves, and to the ways it’s victims and participants were deluded by in its execution. 

Mandel is a brilliant story architect who is unfortunately burdened by terrible dialogue. None of this was helped by this audiobook’s reader, who seemed to interpret all of the characters' communication with near unbearable levels of pretentiousness. This created a defined sense as a listener that all of these characters speak their lines the same way with the exception of Alkaitis. This unfortunately reveals a heavy handedness from the author despite how thoughtfully these characters are developed over the course of the story (often nonlinearly). However, this is made up for Mandel’s inventiveness and near obsessive detail in not only resolving storylines, but also adding new mystery to them to tie them to other parts of the narrative, leading the reader to question a greater spectral background. 

In the Ponzi schemes' fallout and aftermath we also see how these characters move on with their lives, and the repercussions. With careers as composers, a cook on a merchant marine vessel, and confronting ghosts and alternate timelines whilst ruminating in prison, this is where we see Mandel’s storytelling line up with the rest of her work. What we are left with as readers from this is a meandering yet satisfying melodrama that leaves almost no narrative stone unturned to some of the story's central existential mysteries. It also hammers home the point that no self serving act exists in a vacuum. Whether this is supposed to serve as some sort of moral lesson, or an uncomfortable nihilistic existential question is something we’re left to ponder after the fact, just like the characters.

Very character-focused, engaging and immersive, but with not much of a plot. I liked the themes of guilt and regret and how they were explored, but the ending left more to be desired. Overall worth it thi :>

3.75 I absolutely love her writing style and will continue to read her books for that fact alone. Her prose is haunting and she interweaves throughout storylines, timelines, etc so beautifully. With that said… I just didn’t feel much of a connection with the main characters in the book. I cared far more about the side characters Alkaitis screwed over and his white collar asset crew than any of the main characters (Vincent, Paul, & Alkaitis). I like the commentary she was making and how she posed the story around the idea of how easily a person can slip into alternative realities, whether it be from wealth to poverty, freedom to a jail cell, trophy wife to line cook. Other things: - found myself really enjoying the Office Chorus chapter and how they dealt with their morality and the situation at hand - the subtlety of discussing Leon Prevant’s layoff and the underpinnings of the recession of 2008 was poignant and wish we had a bit more of all those implications - LOVED the alternate realities of the Station Eleven characters and the offhand comment at the beginning of the book about the flu in Georgia being swiftly stopped - I liked the symbolism of the ghosts being a hidden consequence of the characters guilt, but much like in the movie adaption of the shining.. I was like are these ghosts real or just psychological and meh

I'm going to keep this brief. Looking back this was the best book i read in 2020 Similar in tone to Station Eleven, though without superfluous characters (Jeevan I am looking at you) Also, i think i love the idea of multiple books existing in the same world, just where different thing happened

“O Hotel de Vidro” surgiu depois do enorme sucesso conseguido com “Station Eleven (2015)”, transformado em série para a HBO. Neste sucessor, Emily St John Mandel continua a oferecer-nos excelência no contar de histórias, ligando personagens, lugares, tempos e eventos numa sucessão que nos agarra e faz virar página atrás de página. Se não existe relação entre as premissas de ambas as obras, o contar de histórias, no tom e ritmo, de emocionalidades suaves, distantes e pausadas aproxima-as tremendamente. Por sua vez, as premissas de ambos tratam temas fortes, no primeiro o pós-apocalipse, neste o colapso financeiro de 2008. Mandel cruza assim um sentimento na forma, do tipo cinema independente — de Hal Hartley ou Jim Jarmusch —, com premissas intensas tipo hollywoodescas, criando uma voz muito própria. Os seus livros não trazem grandes mensagens, não nos comovem em cada página, mas simultaneamente não nos abandonam nem deixam de nos fazer refletir, ficando connosco depois do final. Como se Mandel falasse a partir de uma posição que lhe permite dar a compreender os problemas, mas sentindo não deter qualquer poder para lhes responder. Este sentir surge como parte de uma certa melancolia que olha o mundo como um emaranhado de acontecimentos que se ligam e desligam pelo acaso, sem intenção nem desígnio. https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

This book is full of beautiful prose and vivid imagery, but The Glass Hotel is utterly, disappointingly dull. It's difficult to even figure out where and how to start this review. It's not about a hotel, as the title will lead you to believe. It's about a Ponzi scheme (à la Bernie Madoff) and the financial crisis of 2008. The characters are flat and they flit and flutter in and out of the story. These things disappointed me more and more as the story progressed. Ponzi schemes are interesting, sure, but there wasn't any... substance. The story was a glimpse into fictional lives of fictional characters (based-ish off real people) that I was unable to connect with or care about. I enjoyed the tiny nod to the characters who also flit and flutter in and out of Station Eleven. Other than that... I was glad when I reached the end of this story.

Love her writing.