3.5
The Glass Hotel
By Emily St. John MandelPublisher Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
“The perfect novel ... Freshly mysterious.” —The Washington Post
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
Look for Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
“The perfect novel ... Freshly mysterious.” —The Washington Post
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
Look for Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities2790 Reviews
3.5
“There was just too much trying to happen in this book. The themes didn’t feel fleshed out very well. There were several parts where I felt absolutely lost and it took a couple minutes to figure out where we had jumped to in the storyline…”
Unengaging charactersUnsatisfying plot
Abi Allums
Created about 24 hours agoShare
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“I have mixed feelings about this book. Generally, this book follows Vincent, a bartender with a drug addict brother and a fondness for filmmaking. After the disappearance of her mother when she was 12, Vincent looks for solid ground and finds it in Jonathan. Jonathan is a rich investment broker who proposes a deal in which Vincent acts as his wife and she gets to spend her time (and his money) as she likes. This book flips between childhood, her time with Jonathan, and her time after. The issues I had with this book mainly center on the multiple povs. This book contained at least 6 full chapters from other characters povs. Sometimes it was relevant like with Jonathan or her brother Paul but even so it was confusing. Also Emily tends to have strong sci-fi(ish) themes in her books and this one was weird but there wasn't much fantasy in this book. I just feel like this could have been stronger but it also could be because I adored Sea of Tranquility and this DOES NOT measure up.”
Multi-layered charactersTwistyRealistic settingDarkThought-provokingSelf-harmUnengaging charactersUnsatisfying plot
Karley Shay 🤎
Created 2 days agoShare
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Hana
Created 3 days agoShare
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“3.75⭐️ It’s gonna take me 3-5 business days to process this”Multi-layered charactersBeautifully writtenImmersive settingThought-provokingPredictableUnsatisfying ending
weetosmom ✨🪿🫧
Created 7 days agoShare
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About Emily St. John Mandel
EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL's five previous novels include The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives in New York City.
Other books by Emily St. John Mandel
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