The Glass Hotel
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
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 . . .
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Emily St. John Mandel is emerging as one of the most exciting literary voices around. Her previous bestseller, Station Eleven, centered on a Shakespearean troupe traversing a post-apocalyptic America. In The Glass Hotel, she weaves together a deeply affecting, mesmerising story that involves a luxe resort on a remote British Columbia island perpetually shrouded in fog; an estranged brother and sister flung apart by resentment, addiction, and betrayal; a Bernie Madoff–level Ponzi scheme; and a humungous container ship that serves as a refuge for the book’s main character, Vincent, when her life falls apart. Mandel’s scope is astonishing. Even more so is her talent for writing characters who are so singular and specific they feel like they could walk off the page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mandel's wonderful novel (after Station Eleven) follows a brother and sister as they navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt. Settings include British Columbia's coastal wilderness, New York City's fashionable neighborhoods and corporate headquarters, a container ship in international waters, and a South Carolina prison. In 1994, 18-year-old drug-using dropout Paul Smith visits his 13-year-old half-sister, Vincent, in Vancouver. Vincent has just lost her mother and acquired her first video camera. Five years later, in the wilderness north of Vancouver, Vincent tends bar at a luxury hotel where Paul works as the night houseman. Paul leaves after writing on a window in acid marker a message even he doesn't understand. Vincent relocates to the East Coast and what Mandel calls the kingdom of money to play trophy wife for investor Jonathan Alkaitis. When Jonathan's Ponzi scheme collapses, he goes to prison, where his victims' ghosts visit him. Finished with Jonathan and the affluent lifestyle and ignored by her best friend, Vincent takes a job as assistant cook on a container ship. Paul, meanwhile, has set Vincent's old videos to music. The videos have helped Paul, despite a lifelong drug problem, tap into his creative gifts. Using flashbacks, flash-forwards, alternating points-of-view, and alternate realities, Mandel shows the siblings moving in and out of each other's lives, different worlds, and versions of themselves, sometimes closer, sometimes further apart, like a double helix, never quite linking. This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness. 200,000-copy announced first printing.)
Customer Reviews
The wordsnith
I found the narrative to be all over the place and quite strange - I didn’t really enjoy it but read it just for the word craft. The descriptions are mesmerising. I couldn’t put it down.
The Glass Hotel
I really enjoyed this book it starts quite slowly but soon has the reader gripped. The writing brings the characters alive and you feel like you know them by the end. I miss one of the characters, Vincent, who I feel I have met and spent some time with.