The Glass Hotel

Another beautifully written book by Emily St. John Mandel. She sets such interesting scenes between her characters and weaves together a complex plot wonderfully. The description of the book really intrigued me but that part of the story doesn't really start until about halfway through. The first half is about the characters that feature prominently later on but I found that less compelling to read. I LOVE financial crisis intrigue and have read much about the Ponzi scheme on which this is based so for me, the second half of the book was supremely interesting. This is nothing like the dystopian world she so vividly created Station Eleven. However, it is still an exceptionally well-written book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book!

When barmaid Vincent meets Jonathan Alkaitis in the Hotel where she works, she quickly enters a world of untold riches. Although they portray themselves as a married couple, Vincent and Jonathan are not married. When Jonathan’s Ponzi scheme unravels and he ends up in Jail, the disastrous effects are revealed through the clients and the colleagues. Olivia, an octogenarian painter, who invested her retirement fund with him, Leon a shipping consultant, are among the people who’s lives are ruined. While in prison Jonathan is confronted by the ghosts of his victims and he lives most of the time in a counter life where he can hide from what he has done. A ghost story of sorts, this novel looks at taking responsibility for your actions and how willingly you can turn a blind eye for money. It also shows how easily you can be caught up in the webs of deceit,and how disastrous it is for those effected.
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It’s almost impossible to review this book without mentioning ‘Station Eleven’ as an incredibly difficult novel to follow. It’s one of my rare five stars, and so when I read that this book was going to be a financial thriller, I was nervous at best. I don’t do financial books, nor do I willingly foray into crime thrillers particularly often. However, there’s just something about the author’s way of writing that leaves me completely breathless and desperately flicking pages.

This book follows the events leading up to and the aftermath of a series of financial frauds. It ties a beginning and end together masterfully, and gives an absolute sense of urgency and mystery throughout. The characters are written extraordinarily well, with Vincent being a particular standout, as she is so pragmatic and simultaneously somewhat naive. Every single loose thread in this novel is picked up and woven back into the story at some point, like some kind of incredible needlework piece. No plot line is left behind.

The action is fast paced and gives the reader a very real sense of building dread from the get-go. You know what is going to happen here; it’s just a matter of time before it does. Even though the focus is the 2008 crash, this could easily hold a candle to great murder mysteries- the way it is written makes financial fraud thrilling. A wonderfully good novel, and I cannot wait to see what the author writes next- she’s proved she can write entirely different genres and still be top tier.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for my review copy!

In Emily St John Mandel's previous much loved novel ‘Station Eleven’ she wrote about a post-apocalyptic world which had an almost dream-like feel. This novel is centred around a modern day financial calamity but has that same ethereal, other worldly quality. Hotel Caiette, the glass hotel, itself feels disconnected from time and place "an improbable palace lit up against the darkness of the forest" with it's wall of glass looking over the wilderness. Built on a small island off the north coast of Vancouver Island, it can only be reached by boat and allows guests to feel that they are in the middle of wilderness without having to actually be in it, instead cocooned in the luxury of a modern hotel.

The glass hotel is not so much the focus of the book as the centrepoint where the characters paths cross and chance meetings and decisions are made that will affect all their futures. The main character, Vincent Smith is the night bartender at the hotel. She grew up in Caiette but left at the age of thirteen when her mother disappeared while kayaking. While working one night she will meet the owner of the hotel, Jonathan Alkaitis, a wealthy New York financier and leave to start a new life with him. Vincent's half brother Paul also working at the hotel as a night porter has after dropping out of business school but is a thwarted musician. Jealous of Vincent for her relationship with their father who left Paul's mother for Vincent's, Paul is already bored with the job and ready for an opportunity coming his way. In the early hours of the morning Leon Prevant, a shipping executive and insomniac, sipping his whisky, is the only guest in the bar when someone camouflaged in black etches an extraordinary phrase on the glass window shocking all who see it. Leon will also meet Jonathan Alkaitis later that day and make a decision that will later change his life forever.

Those at the hotel that night will move on to other lives. Ones that that will involve greed, betrayal, theft and fraud and feel no less unreal than living in the glass hotel. Vincent finds herself living in the rarefied world of the very wealthy where spending thousands shopping soon becomes boring and will later find herself living at sea in another existence that seems to exist outside of the world.

The novel is strangely beautiful given it is about financial fraud and is infused with Mandel's lyrical, atmospheric writing. The characters are subtly and fully depicted. Following the corruption there will be suicides but also survival and re-invention for some, but always with the danger of slipping below the surface into madness or into that shadow land of mere existence in contemporary America. A very inventive and almost hypnotic novel to read.

Vincent works night shift as a bartender at a remote Canadian hotel; her brother Paul works there as a janitor. One night, in the presence of a wealthy client, a disturbing graffiti appears on the glass wall: "Why don't you eat broken glass?". Customers and staff are shocked and disturbed, Paul is blamed and is fired.

Not long after, the hotel's owner, financier Jonathon Alkaitas, makes Vincent an unusual offer; come to live with him in New York and pretend to be his trophy wife. She accepts, and her life is changed forever. Vincent has limitless credit to spend in New York's swishest neighbourhoods, moves in the most rarefied of circles and accompanies Jonathon to meetings with his biggest clients. She takes to this new life readily. After a while, she hears that Paul is playing a concert in Brooklyn. She goes to see him, but storms out in disgust. In the background, things are turning grim as the Global Financial Crisis looms.

Mandel's follow-up to Station Eleven is another terrific story that introduces an interesting perspective on the crash and its aftermath. Her array of characters allows her to portray the impact of this disaster on the disparate people involved: executives, finance workers, investors and their families. I particularly liked the ending, which is both tender and appropriate.

The Glass Hotel is a beautifully written book that will stay with me for a long time. Whilst the subject of finance and financial institutions could be seen as a rather dry subject, Mandel's writing is so full of depth I was totally intrigued and engrossed throughout the entire story.

We are taken on a journey through the lives of three main characters, Jonathan, Vincent and Paul, jumping around between the late 1990's through to 2018. The story switches between each character and back and forth through the different timelines yet they all intertwine perfectly.

Underpinning the entire novel is the story of Jonathan Alkaitis, the extremely wealthy mastermind behind what would become one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. We witness the vastly different ways people deal with the devastation of complete financial ruin, from those who are full of greed wanting a quick return on their money, to the trusting middle class retirees investing their entire life savings.

Amongst all this sits the Glass Hotel, the luxurious 5 star property in the remote north end of Vancouver Island, accessible only by boat, "a glass and cedar palace at twilight". With the wealth to buy the hotel when he has the opportunity it is here where Jonathan will change people's lives forever. It is here he meets Vincent, who will end up as his unofficial wife, while Paul her half brother, constantly battling with his own demons, tries to hold down a job as the cleaner.

There are a multitude of different characters woven into the overarching story and again, the depth with which we understand them through Mandel's writing, they could all be the centre of the story in their own right.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Glass House and would highly recommend to anyone who loves character-driven novels.

Thank you so much NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Australia for the opportunity to read this amazing book.

Best book of 2020 so far!

Early reviews of this book kept catching my eye. It was rating consistently high but every reviewer, without fail, mentioned that the story was about *finance*. Being new to the work of Emily St John Mandel and therefore having no other points of reference, I took this little piece of information and thought clearly the book is good...just not for me. How wrong I was! Luckily for me there was a tipping point of good reviews, after which I decided I simply had to see for myself. Now I can barely wait to delve into the author's earlier novels.

Regarding the finance theme:- you do not need to know about, or to be interested in, finance to understand and enjoy this book. There are no details - neither fine nor broad - to read through and get across. If you have heard of a Ponzi scheme and have a vague notion of what it is, then that is enough. And if not, the Wikipedia overview is more than you need. Because really, while it is anchored around an event that reads very much like Bernie Madoff's infamous failed Ponzi scheme, this is a story about people and connections. And it is dreamily lyrical and so far above the profane world of finance that it becomes almost irrelevant.

What interested me much more was the dual theme of the Counterlife. The 'what ifs' of life. What if something else was done or said, and things turned out differently? It's a concept that all the characters ruminate on, in one way or another, and for one with plenty of time to kill, there is a danger of getting stuck there in that counterlife. Without this thread running through the story I feel like I may not have really come to know the characters very well (except maybe Paul, who was almost jarringly WYSIWYG), but by reading their real lives and getting a peek at their counterlives, I actually felt like I knew them very well by the end. From the blamed to the blameless, my heart ached for them all - for what was, and for what might have been.

This is a book I read slowly to try to prolong the enjoyment; to delay the moment it would end and I would have to put it down.

This novel is like a piece of shattered glass -- an event is foreshadowed, circled around, then depicted through the multiple perspectives of those who weren't there, those who learned secondhand, and the man at the heart of it all, across decades of time, creating a fragmented, multilayered effect for the reader. Throughout the narrative, the characters move into and within alternate 'countries', such as the country of wealth -- one where only its citizens know its particular rules and language. But this country is overlaid another country with laws and regulations. How does one know which country they are living in when they are overlaid one another like that? This is a novel to become immersed in. I found the idea of living in isolation, a world within a world, highly relevant and the desire to retreat to the wilderness alone was appealing.
With thanks to Netgalley and Pan MacMillan Australia for my copy to review.

A hotel and a ship that's abroad,
Connect lives that are drifting and flawed.
It doesn't twist and turn,
It's all slow character burn,
That left me broken and haunted and floored.

I was enthralled. Not so much a story as a collection of moments, scattered across decades between multiple characters. To describe the plot would do the book a disservice. It’s not about any one thing, it’s about how all things are fleeting, and how we all strive to give our lives purpose. Meanders in the best possible way, poetic but not indulgent. A book that feels less like a narrative told than a dream felt. Wonderful.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Glasa Hotel tells the story of many interconnected characters affected by the corporate corruption of a Ponzi scheme.

The author, Emily St John Mandel, interweaves the stories from various perspectives, skipping both forwards and backwards in time, resulting in a novel which is often dreamlike and at other times almost haunting.

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

The story is set in different timelines and told from multiple points of view. A large portion of the book is about the collapse and aftermath of a Ponzi Scheme and the greed and guilt that goes along with it. The characters are complex and compelling, their paths cross and chance meetings and decisions are made that will affect all their futures.

This was a well written book and much thought and research went into it but I felt that it did drag somewhat.