The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

February 23, 2020

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Located on a remote bay on Vancouver Island, the luxury Hotel Caiette caters to a wealthy clientele in search of a reprieve from their daily lives in the corporate world.  Super-rich financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel but his wealth is built on a house of cards:  his investment firm is actually a giant Ponzi scheme that he has been running for decades.

I wasn’t initially interested in reading a book about a Ponzi scheme, but I like the author’s previous book Station Eleven so much that I decided to give her new book a try.  The Glass Hotel is similar in structure to the previous book in that there is a definite “before” and “after” related to a specific event, and the story line wraps around itself, moving from character to character and backward and forward in time.  It is also set in the same world and time as Station Eleven since events from that book are referenced here and at least two of the characters recur.  As in Station Eleven, the beginning is also the ending.

While the basic plot is about the Ponzi scheme and all of the people affected by it, there are a number of sub-plots and the characters are fascinating.  The overall story is hard to summarize since part of the appeal is finding out how the characters connect to each other and what happens to them (it reminded me of the television show Lost in that regard).  Several characters are chameleon-like, reinventing themselves and their lives as needed, if not in reality, then in an alternate universe.

Fraud and facades play a role, not only with the money fund but with relationships and creativity – at one point, Vincent’s brother steals a number of videos that she made and passes them off as his own work (Vincent is female).  Characters often express regret and wonder “what if” and “if I had only,” and imagine a counterlife where they acted differently than they actually did, although their versions of themselves in that parallel universe are not necessarily better people.

I found this to be very enjoyable and recommend it to anyone who reads literary fiction.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.