I am a huge fan of Emily St John Mandel's work and this matched the magical otherworldliness of 'Station Eleven' with the humanity and gripping plot of her debut. The story starts out a little slow with the introduction of many different characters but persevere with it. There are so many different threads and concepts within the book but they never become overwhelming or distracting, instead adding depth and humanity to the story. The plot is full of mystery and the ending brings all the diverse threads of the story together in a brilliant way. Read it!

“There are so many ways to haunt a person, or a life.” Would you believe* that this has ended up being one of my few favorite novels of the year, even though the description did not appeal in the least and I added it to my TBR and removed it no fewer than three times? No matter how many reviews I read or friends’ ratings I saw, I couldn’t figure out what the book was about or why I should read it. Luckily, I took a chance on Mandel based on how good Station Eleven was, and this was even better.

It took me almost the whole book, but I decided this is about rootless people who are stuck in literal or figurative states they don’t fully understand. A hotel is not a home (except for one minor character late on) but a retreat from the world, especially the title hotel, isolated as it is a ferry ride away from the Vancouver mainland. Addiction is its own country for Paul, as is money for his half-sister, Vincent, who unexpectedly takes on the role of trophy wife to an older New York financier named Jonathan Alkaitis. When his Ponzi scheme goes bust, he and his staff are exiled in the “shadow country” of poverty or imprisonment. As memory fails him and he encounters the ghosts of those he wronged, Alkaitis becomes a voyager in the “counterlife” he might have lived had he fled the country before it was too late.

Shuttling between the concrete (the shipping industry) and the abstract (even imaginary money can pay for luxuries), and laced with music and visual art, the novel explores liminal spaces, finding the fairy tales and nightmares that nip at the heels of real life. It delves into risk and denial. It is indeed a haunting book, with characters, settings, moments and phrases (Sweep me up, Why don’t you swallow broken glass, even the three words that open my review – *an opening gambit Vincent uses multiple times as she tries to convince in the various roles she plays) coming back to needle you and deflate your certainty. There were many passages I sought out for rereading two or three times to find clues. It’s a satisfyingly layered story for fans of Jennifer Egan and John Lanchester, or basically any contemporary lit fic aficionado.

In the same way that people who would never knowingly read a dystopian science fiction novel took Station Eleven to their hearts, this should capture all sorts of readers for how confidently and smartly it’s put together. So hush with all your excuses (but I don’t even know what a Ponzi scheme is, but I don’t like books about the financial crisis, but I have no interest in hotels or long-distance shipping…) and just read it already.

Station Eleven is one of my favourite books of all time, so I was delighted to be given a copy of Emily St John Mandel's latest novel, The Glass Hotel.

This is a very different beast, but one thing's for sure: from the opening page you know you are in the hands of a gifted storyteller. Described as "a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it," you can't fault the author's ambition. Moving back and forth in time between. the financial crash of 2008 and the imprisoned perpetrators of the Ponzi scheme, who receive a 170-year sentence and, during which, the leader hallucinates ghosts of his past... well. This is a strange period of history, evoked in a fascinating way that transcends linear time. The novel feels otherworldly and surreal, like looking through glass.

Stylistically, Emily St John Mandel is still a wonder at observation and I would gladly read anything she writes. But while Station Eleven had a romanticism to it, an artful nostalgia and heady atmosphere, The Glass Hotel feels more grounded in both subject matter and setting. If you loved the dream-like feel of Station Eleven, this reads like a different parallel world in St John Mandel's imagination, but one I was very happy to visit.

Thank you to the publisher for the reading copy.

Like many people, I discovered Emily St. John Mandel via Station Eleven, one of my favourite books so couldn't wait to read The Glass Hotel. I wasn't disappointed. This is a wonderful, melancholy and ethereal novel which examines greed, family and loss. At times it felt almost dreamlike and when I put the book down I emerged back into the real world with my head still firmly lost in The Glass Hotel. She is such an accomplished and talented writer who transported me to Canda and America and wormed her way under my skin. Marvellous.

This is a fascinating and beguiling book, but a hard one to place. It’s kind of a mystery (but not really a crime novel, although it does feature a number of crimes), but also has a healthy dose of magical realism and lots of human drama. Like Mandel’s much-loved ‘Station Eleven’ it features a large cast of characters and skips back and forth in time. In the hands of a less skilled writer, this might have been confusing, but Mandel makes it work brilliant. It gives the book a dreamlike feel at times, but also a real weight. It’s an enjoyable read, but also one that feels quite important. For a lot of the book I struggled with the sense that I didn’t really know what it was about, but by the end everything came sharply into focus.

I wasn't taken with this, though I can see it may well appeal to other readers. I think Ms St John Mantel writes beautifully, but in the end the narrative lost me. It might have lost her as well. I really struggled to complete this.

[Gifted]
This was really beautifully written, about a strange time in history - the 2008 financial crash. It centres around a small business realising they're going to be arrested for running a Ponzi scheme, jumping back and forth in time between 2008 and their time in prison with a 170 year sentence, where the leader hallucinates ghosts of his past. It was really interesting, but for me it didn't really push the boundaries of what I wanted the story to do - it didn't surprise me in any way, or really lead to a big message which I wanted it to do. Her writing is so lovely that I was completely immersed while reading it, but I'm left wanting more now it's over.

This is the first Emily St John Mandel book I have read and did have high expectations due to the outstanding reviews I had read and seen not just for this book but also for previous ones. Sadly I found that this book left me feeling more confused than satisfied. I was ready to DNF this book at about 20% as I was going back and rereading previous chapters and paragraphs thinking that I missed something especially in the beginning, but I kept plugging on hoping that it would all click into place for me. It never really did.
There just felt like there were too many characters to read about and although I get that they were all connected in some way I was not able to connect with any of them enough to know if I liked them or not. The message I got from it was that what goes around comes around for most of these characters and that they were not really a very likable bunch but that was more from me making assumptions rather than understanding the characters.
The descriptions of places and things was amazing and I felt the author had a real knock for being able to transport you to the place she was describing but for me it was not enough.

Verdict: I loved this so.

I am having a difficult time putting into words why I loved this so. A book prominently featuring a Ponzi scheme and its fall out is on paper not something that should work for me – but this is Emily St. John Mandel we are talking about here, author of one of my all-time favourite books whose next work I had been eagerly awaiting for literal years. And underneath the premise, there are so very many things that I adore in fiction: told unchronologically from a variety of points of views, featuring difficult characters that I nevertheless rooted for (especially Vincent who I just adored), with hints of the supernatural as manifestation of guilt, scenes that would recontextualize what came before, and above all the author’s incredible way with words.

This is not a book concerned with closure or with satisfying conclusions and I thought it was that much stronger because of this. Emily St. John Mandel deals with human emotions and human faults without shying away from the fact that often in life, things do not end with a neat bow around them. Her characters make irreversible mistakes, they hurt each other and themselves, and they just have to live with that. Many of them reminisce about how their lives could have turned out differently if they had chosen different paths, imagining a sort of parallel universe where their mistakes were not this grave – and I loved this. The whole book has a lovely sense of melancholy but it is not hopeless which is a difficult to achieve balance.

I really do hope I won’t have to wait as long as last time for a new book by Emily St. John Mandel.

Content warnings: drug abuse, death of a loved one, ghosts

Whenever an actor plays a villain, they tend to say they play their role as someone who sees themselves as the hero. This is always an interesting sounding statement but sometimes you do have to question really you don’t think murder, theft and treachery are pushing things a bit? Perhaps deep down they know the line was crossed a long time ago? In The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel we look at some of the villains of the 2008 financial crisis and what they may have known about. It’s managed to be both an enchanting and also frustratingly opaque read.

This novel weaves through time but we start with a young woman named Vincent plunging into icy water in 2018 then jumping back in time to 1994 where we meet Paul a partly recovering drug addict in Toronto sullenly trying to turn his life around. An effort to impress a young woman goes tragically wrong and he runs to hide from any consequences with his estranged sister Vincent.

We flash forward, and then find the Hotel Caiette, a beautiful isolated hotel in the wilderness famous for its glass walls where you can see out into the night from your comfortable chairs. Here both Paul and Vincent have service positions and trouble comes when a mysterious threatening message gets written on a wall leading to accusations and resignations. Finally, we follow the strange final years of Jonathan Alkatis extremely rich financier; for whom Vincent becomes his not quite trophy wife. Alkatis excels at selling to many people dreams of fortunes unheard of and yet deep down he knows the clock is also ticking for him. All these lives and many more we meet are connected through time and slowly we will find out exactly what happened on that night at sea.

I found this a puzzling read. On the positive side I really could not put it down once I started. Mandel is as we know from Station Eleven an enchanting storyteller and this story has brilliant hooks. From Vincent’s fall into the depths of a sea to the mystery of why Alkatis ends in jail (all hinted at in one of the early fast-forwards) we are given as readers a huge tangle of mysteries to unravel. Mandel’s use of language and structure here is brilliant. In some ways the weaving of past and future definitely echo Station Eleven’s format and how this novel makes time flow back and forth, so we examine key elements that lead to the futures we have seen is once again mesmerising. The overall atmosphere here is of people haunted by the ghosts of the past and future. Be they Paul’s fears of his crime in Toronto; Vincent’s feelings of abandonment by her mother who disappeared many years ago or even Alkatis’ being haunted by his victims in jail. This is a novel where everyone expects the hammer to eventually fall and they know their joy is not everlasting and perhaps they can never truly embrace it. There is a brilliant set of scenes where we watch a Ponzi scheme crew in their final 24 hours before arrests start and watching these people react to the news that it is finally over is an intriguing study I human behaviour as we see guilt; relief, anger, practicality or pure confusion. We often meet characters who only serve one act’s purpose, but they haunt the rest of the book.

Where I had issues with the story was its main theme – everyone is guilty of bending the rules. As an example, we meet Olivia who many years ago painted Alkatis’ brother who was a drug addict. She exposed his human frailty to the world; and it became her best-selling picture. Later on, she invests her money in Alkatis’ schemes. Innocent or guilty? With Vincent we see someone who decides to be Alkatis’ pretend wife and enjoy life in what she ends up calling the Kingdom on Money but her friendships and attachments are all fleeting and when she escapes that life she finds those she knew best no longer recognise her. I liked the exploration that the people who do these things are fully aware they are committing crimes and hurting people but end up prioritising their own lifestyle for themselves or loved ones first as that helped the reader understand why people carried past that point of no return.

I think the novels falls down though when Mandel tries to put forward that everyone is fully aware of these boundaries and is complicit in them. There is a disquieting idea that Alkatis’ victims like Olivia deep down knew this wasn’t real and they enjoyed the dividends so in some ways the eventual bankruptcy isn’t really unexpected – it makes it seem a middle class inconvenience and forgets the many working class people who lost their homes and livelihoods. This worries me as Ponzi schemes are made by experts in selling dreams and targeting the weak. I was hoping for a greater examination of why people got so fascinated with wealth – capitalism could just as easily be seen as a Ponzi scheme leading to the 2008 crash and I thought this would be better explored but overall I felt the target was missed.

I definitely want to read more of Mandel’s work. That style of storytelling and approach even in this novel was just a joy to savour and explore how it is done. But in this case the themes felt curiously off target and my overall feeling at the end was of a missed opportunity. It is an interesting read but not one I think that really captures why the last decade was so painful for so many.

Going into it and expecting another station eleven was, admittedly, a mistake. It was much less ethereal and artistic, but I did enjoy the parallels. It felt like the same and different.

Every character was despicable and after awhile I found it hard to go on without a single person to root for. I didn't really understand their motivations.

It also felt like it was missing something, like the ending was a few chapter ahead and they got lost in transit.

That said, it's finely written and fascinating. Someone said it's the Kansas to Station Eleven 's ghost and I have to agree. Would still recommend and I ordered a few copies for a space at front of store.

I have to say that this book did not engage my interest, and I found it hard going. Unfortunately by 20%, I abandoned it. I was not drawn to the writing style, or the fact that the storyline jumped back and forward in time, sometimes without warning. It was pretty depressing to read, and I was very reluctant to go back to it when I put it down, never a good sign. I am sure it will appeal to many readers, but it just wasn’t for me.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this book.

A modern style book which I don't usually enjoy. This, however, was well written and had a good plot. I found it a little slow in pace and lacked the roller-coaster twists and turns that I often yearn for. For me, the characters and location were worth the read. Recommended.

I absolutely bloody loved this. Usually I always read synopses but for some reason I didn't want to with this. Station Eleven was amazing and the title and cover of this book seemed so mysterious that I didn't want to spoil it.

It was absolutely not what I expected, even after reading the first few pages. It was weird but not as fantastical as I was expecting. There was some weird ghostly parts but it primarily focused the exposure of a massive Ponzi scheme and the impact it had on the innocent investors. The first half of the book definitely seemed more character-driven as we moved around from person to person, moving onto more action later on.

It probably helps that I'm massively interested in business catastrophes like scams, fraud etc, so I genuinely found that element of the book interesting. I think if you didn't, some of the book could drag. But hopefully the ethereal descriptions and characters make up for it.

I am a big fan of Station Eleven so was delighted to receive an e-copy for review (Thanks Netgalley and Picador).

From the synopsis this sounds like a very different book to Station Eleven. Instead of a deadly global pandemic we have the fallout from the global financial crash and whilst there's no apparent direct link between the books they appear to exist in the same fictional universe. I may be misremembering as I've not read Station Eleven for a while, but don't the characters of Leon and Miranda appear in both books?

Just as the global pandemic provides a backdrop to Station Eleven, the financial crisis provides a backdrop to The Glass Hotel. The story is an elaborate tale of interweaving narratives. At first it's a little unclear how the threads fit together as the timeline jumps around slightly and we're told the story from different points of view, but for me this is the beauty of St John Mandel's writing style.

The Glass Hotel is a story of opposites; of rags to riches, actions and consequences. A story of what-ifs and maybes it considers the allure of wealth and privilege and the power associated with these. The story shines a light on human behaviour and our willingness to be swept away on a sea of lies.

I love the way the book opens and closes from Vincent's point of view...but that's all I'll say about that!

The Glass Hotel is a powerful character driven novel which I read in just a few sittings. A worthy follow up to Station Eleven and highly recommended.

https://lynns-books.com/2020/08/03/the-glass-hotel-by-emily-st-john-mandel/
My TL:DR Five Word Review : Could not put it down

To be honest, I requested a review copy of The Glass Hotel because I loved Station Eleven. I didn’t read the description and when I picked up the book I’d only read a couple of reviews and had very little idea what to expect, although I was becoming a little nervous because on the face of it the premise seemed a little outside of my comfort zone. In fact, if somebody was to try and give me an idea of what The Glass Hotel was about I think it would probably come across really badly and I’d undoubtedly run a mile. So, basically, I’m not going to talk about the plot at all because I think at best I would end up tying myself in knots and at worst maybe even discourage others from reading this because of my botched attempt at summarising the gist of the story.

Here’s a snippet from Goodreads :

‘From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.’

So, I’m going to focus on other things here and it’s all going to be positive.

On the face of it a story spread over a couple of decades with a backdrop that examines the financial crisis of 2008 particularly centring on ponzi schemes couldn’t sound less appealing to me even if it tried. And yet, here I find myself absolutely loving this book and wanting to wax lyrical about it. To be blunt, I simply can’t believe how much I enjoyed this story. I feel like I’ve been mesmerized or hypnotised or some special magic has been worked. I read this in one day, ignoring the everyday mundane banalities such as eating or chores and in fact staying up until the wee hours to finish it and even though I was shattered when I eventually crashed into bed I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

This book is complex. It goes back and forth between people and times and yet it all comes together in perhaps one of the most satisfying ways I’ve ever encountered. The characters are so well imagined that I feel like I know them and the strong emotions that this creates really contributes to the overall experience.

On top of this the writing is brilliant. I take my hat off to the author for pulling together such a myriad of tales using what can reasonably be described as quite ‘dry’ material and yet managing to make this into a compelling tale filled with mystery, sadness and unexpected depth.

To be honest, I’m not going to say too much more because I feel like my review has taken on the semblance of a headless chicken running around hysterically.

In a nutshell I loved this book. It’s a haunting story, beautifully written, that depicts people in many guises. Like a pebble dropped into a pond it look at the ripples we cause through our actions, sometimes knowingly, sometimes whilst fiercely in denial and sometimes by pure chance. It’s not a heartwarming tale of love and laughter. It’s not a tale of swords and sorcery. But it’s a book that managed to overwhelm me in the most unexpected way and, because of that, I love it.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

Rating 5 of 5 stars

Terribly sorry, this was a DNF for me. I did enjoy Station Eleven, and though the writing was lovely I found myself unable to engage with this one. I may well try again as the timing may simply have been wrong, and hope I will enjoy it more next time.

I'm going to give it a 3 to be fair - as I said, it may have been the wrong time for me to read this title.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan Picador for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Glass Hotel’ by Emily St. John Mandel in exchange for an honest review. Its ebook and audiobook editions were published in April with the hardback due for release on 6 August.

“December 2018. Begin at the end: plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s wild darkness, breath gone with the shock of falling, my camera flying away through the rain” - opening ‘The Glass Hotel’

This is a novel that fluidly moves back and forth in time charting the lives and fortunes of its characters. In the spring of 2005 Vincent is working as a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island.

The hotel is owned by New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis. On meeting Vincent he passes her his card and it’s the start of their life together. She soon realises “that money is its own country.” On the same day, a hooded figure had scrawled a sinister message on the windowed wall of the hotel.

This message shocks hotel guest Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship and Leon is involved in the internal investigation. In between these events in 2008 a massive Ponzi scheme is exposed in New York impacting many lives.

This was astonishingly good as Emily St. John Mandel skilfully weaves together the lives of her characters and moves between locations and through time. I was completely caught up in the narrative.

I recently read Emily St John Mandel’s acclaimed ‘Station Eleven’ where both Leon and Miranda, another ‘Glass Hotel’ character, feature. The author also cleverly links the two novels by having Vincent muse on the thought of alternative realities “where the terrifying new swine flu in the Republic of Georgia hadn’t been swiftly contained; an alternate world where the Georgia flu blossomed into an unstoppable pandemic and civilization collapsed.”

The novel has touches of magical realism as a few characters experience glimpses of living alternative lives or have visions of the deceased. It’s a gentle, reflective mysticism.

Overall, I was very impressed by her lyrical prose, strong characterisation and powerful evocation of her settings. I hope to read her other titles in the near future.

The Glass Hotel weaves a complex narrative throughout, and the cast of characters are intricately intertwined. It follows the fate of Vincent and her half-brother Paul. Two lost souls making their way through grief and addiction. When Vincent meets a wealthy investment mogul, Jonathan Alkaitis, she plays the part of his poised and graceful wife, in and out of the bedroom. In return she gets a limitless credit card, beautiful homes and travel. Her brother Paul, drifting in and out of rehab and jobs, finally finds some success as a composer and musician, but succumbs to his heroin habit once more.

When Jonathan and his colleagues are arrested and sentenced for fraud, we get to see the fallout and the very real human cost of financial crimes. There is a fair amount of technical detail about trading and Ponzi schemes, which I found at times, a little dry and perhaps, for me, not as much detail was really needed.

Vincent changes her appearance and starts a new life as a cook aboard a container ship. Here she finds true happiness and when she's not working, she's travelling the world. Until the night a storm hits and she disappears. There is a question of whether it was an accident or something more sinister.

Jonathan reflects on his crimes in prison, and starts to lose his grasp on reality as he is visited by the ghosts of those most severely affected by his actions.

The Glass House was well written, and an enjoyable read, though I felt there was something a little laboured about the plot at times and I didn't perhaps connect with the story as much as I would like to have.

When I looked at reviews of this book I saw everything from ‘the best book this year’ to ‘had to stop reading am afraid’
I guess that proves the ‘what is great to one isen’t to another’ that we see often re reviews
For me it was ok, not a word I tend to write much when reviewing but it sums it up, it was ok ( with a shrug of my shoulders )
Based on a set of characters, none likeable, who are all, by a fraudulent investment scandal ( and most via family or relationship ties ) loosely, linked to the hotel, it ambles along telling the story of what happens to each before during and after the fraud is discovered, there is no real timeline as such and so one minute you can be with one character in the before,next minute 20 years ahead in the after, this got a bit tiresome at times
The writing style had me wavering between poetic and pretentious although some parts were captivating in their luxuriating of detail ( that wasn’t needed but was interesting to read )
On finishing the book I was none the wiser as to what the book wanted to achieve in all honesty and what the reader was to take away from it, so I will stick to my ‘it was ok’ and feel generous in that

5/10
2.5 Stars