The Glass Hotel

Vincent swam every night to strengthen her will because she was desperately afraid of drowning.

As I neared the end of the book I tried to imagine how I could summarize it. What is the quick recap that can explain what this is about? Is this a story about a hotel and the lives that are interconnected through a period of time?

Or is the story about the web of people Vincent and Paul interacted with and how they continued to bounce around in that sphere of familiar circles? Or is the Ponzi scheme and financial fallout the focus of the book?

For a book without an immediate identity I enjoyed reading it. Emily St. John Mandel crafts an eerie and almost haunting story. I felt as isolated as the guests in the hotel reading this book. There is a sense of isolation and dread but also beauty in the words. Even as I was trying to understand and determine what the book was about I enjoyed the meandering trip it took me on.

All the videos are either beautiful or interesting, but not beautiful or interesting enough, without music added to them.

The story is the equivalent of Vincent's videos and Paul adding a musical score to it. The five minute clips are the characters we get in The Glass Hotel. We receive a glimpse in to their life, and move on. Without the soundtrack the videos aren't as interesting, so without an ensemble of characters and their experiences, a clip on its own wouldn't make sense.

Even as it is, the actions of the characters seem to follow one poor decision after another but those decisions and resulting shared experiences are what bind them to each other.

In their late thirties they'd decided not to have children, which at the time seemed like a sensible way to avoid unnecessary complications and heartbreak, and this decision had lent their lives a certain ease that he'd always appreciated, a sense of blissful unencumbrance. But an encumbrance might also be thought of as an anchor, and what he'd found himself thinking lately was that he wouldn't mind being more anchored to this earth.

The book is a strong 3 stars but not quite 4, but the haunting veil the story has cast on me may linger for a while and have me reconsider the rating at a later time.

I really, really enjoyed Station Eleven. I was a little hesitant to pick this one up because of the disappointed reviews I kept seeing and hearing, but I'll honestly say without a trace of doubt that I'm glad I read it. It's told nonsequentially, much like Station Eleven, which will give you that same feeling of having to piece together a puzzle. It also involves a world-ending event, albeit on a smaller, personal, financial sense than a global, everyone, pandemic sense, which was satisfying to piece together.

Unfortunately the underlying themes of The Glass Hotel were less interesting to me than the themes of Station Eleven. Financial drama just doesn't get the same imagination cells firing for me as "survival is insufficient" from Station Eleven. I also didn't really like any of the characters from The Glass Hotel, because it's hard to feel connected with a Ponzi scheme operator, a trophy wife, or any of the others impacted by the event. I felt things about them, though, which still earns this book points from me.

I also felt like the ending of this book was a little weak. I was disappointed to find out that the ghosts were actual ghosts, and not Jonathan's guilty conscience driving him a bit crazy. You can spin the ending in a semi-satisfying way if you try hard enough, but I felt like it was a bit of a miss in tone from the rest of the book.

I did enjoy my time with this book though, and if you like her writing style from Station Eleven, there's a lot to like from The Glass Hotel. Just don't go into it looking for Station Eleven 2.

Vincent's story is so beautiful and so tragic. Her whole life was borrowed and stolen.



## Why I Picked It Up ##



It was a very convenient combination of being on the Best Fiction Of 2020 and also Available Now at my library. Also I always felt kind of guilty for some reason for not getting into Station Eleven, so I wanted to give the author a second chance.



## What I Want To Remember ##



The way Vincent and other moved through different landscapes. The Country of Money. The Shadow Country. The Other World. The World of Sea and the World of Land. The Shipping World. So many different hidden worlds. It really took the idea of Two Americas and exploded it into Many Americas and followed through on the idea.



I liked the non-linear bits of it and how all the characters crossed through each others lives, sometimes briefly as minor characters.



## What I Didn't Like About It ##



This isn't even a complaint because it added to the dreamy quality of the book, but at one point a little less than halfway through the book, I realized I had this feeling that not much had actually happened so far. Despite this being far from the truth.



## Who I'd Recommend It To ##



Anybody who likes pretty, sad things. But only if you can tolerate a slower pace, a little bit of mystery, and a tiny bit of magic.

If I promised you a book about Ponzi schemes and ghosts and murder mysteries; about the little things that happen to us in a life that haunt us forever, you'd be psyched, right? You'd think: this book could not possibly be boring. And similarly: I see what St. John Mandel is doing here. I respect what she's trying to do. I love the idea of exploring the things that haunt us throughout our lives; the themes we cannot help but return to. I like the idea of personifying that with magical realism ghosts and graffiti that is disturbing out of proportion to the real world. There's a lot of potential here.

But it's SO boring. Unbelievably boring. Is it me? I can't tell. But all of these characters are so flat, I couldn't care about them at all. I found small snippets I liked: the themes, the descriptions of shipping. But these were buried within ~400 pages of mundane details about mundane characters. Dozens of pages about how tedious shopping is that nevertheless bore details of everything that Vincent bought. Interchangeable characters named Melissa, Miranda, Mirella, Monica and Marie that I had to keep referencing back to the dust jacket to see which one went with which substory.

A close friend accused St. John Mandel of being too pretentious to be willing to write speculative fiction. Once seen it couldn't be unseen: this is overwritten, too shy to lean into its interesting themes. It does not arrive at ghosts, nor Ponzi schemes, nor the ocean, for over 200 pages, instead leaning into day-in-the-life written to the teeth. It felt interchangeable with hundreds of other books trying and failing to be The Modern American Novel

Depressing at times, but beautiful overall. Similar feeling to Station Eleven, in that way, come to think of it...

Funny snippet I really liked from the book:

Practically speaking, flying economy from Toronto to Edinburgh meant that he'd been awake for two days, which fell into that increasingly vast category of things that were doable when he was eighteen but less so as he slid into middle age.

-- page 283