The Glass Hotel
Fiction
Knopf Publishing Group
March 24, 2020
Hardcover
320
Purchased
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it. Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it's the beginning of their life together. That same day, Vincent's half-brother, Paul, scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship. Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of northern Vancouver Island, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.
My review:
2.5 stars (rounded up for the writing)
I've been finding myself reading a lot of novels lately that have been written by authors whose previous book I loved. I'm always a bit nervous going in because maybe I've set the bar too high? I'm happy to report that most have hit the mark or exceeded it......until this one (sigh). I was a big fan of Station Eleven, and with this book I'm still a fan of Mandel's writing! She has a way of transporting the reader into a dreamy, ethereal setting like few authors can. So this one gets high marks for the writing, but the plot and characters fell short for me. A lot of the problems I had with this one have more to do with me than what other readers will likely experience. The book almost felt at times like a series of short stories with interconnected characters. I'm not a fan of short stories, I've tried them a million times and now I just avoid them. There were a lot of ghost references, particularly in the ending, and that is another miss for me. The part that I did enjoy was the Ponzi scheme and watching that play out (imagine my surprise that this part of the book was what a lot of high praise reviewers didn't like). I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters, particularly Vincent. There were some that I wanted more of (like Paul) and some I could have done without completely.
In summary, don't take my word on this book! It's gotten high praise from lots of reviewers, and the writing is well worth the read. If I could have gotten over the short story-ish style and the ghosts, I'm sure my rating would have been higher.
It is always tricky when you read a book by an author you've already enjoyed. There is a precarious balance between meeting expectations and simply repeating what has already been done. Sorry to hear this one fell short for you.