The Glass Hotel

(Hardback)

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'A damn fine novel . . . haunting and evocative and immersive' George R R Martin, author of A Game of Thrones The extraordinary novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Station Eleven. Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it's the beginning of their life together. That same day, 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 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, Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the towers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts. ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2020 PRAISE FOR THE GLASS HOTEL 'A lovely, beautifully written and constructed novel that I couldn't put down, full of memorable, unusual characters... Mandel's agility with time in this story was a marvel.' Kristin Hannah, author of The Nightingale 'Elegant . . . beguiling . . . the joys of The Glass Hotel are participatory: piecing together the connections and intersections of Mandel's human cartography, a treasure map ripped to pieces' Guardian 'Though its characters were inspired by Bernie Madoff, his victims, and his enablers, there's much more to this novel than ripped-from-the-headlines voyeurism; it's a gorgeously constructed tapestry, each jewellike sentence building to one of the most devastating, moving endings in recent memory. I read it when I was feeling uniquely exhausted by the demands of COVID-era living; I still couldn't put it down.' Vanity Fair 'Long-anticipated... At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical... In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure. A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.' Kirkus Reviews, starred 'The Glass Hotel is a masterpiece, just as good - if not better - than its predecessor. It's a stunning look at how people react to disasters, both small and large, and the temptation that some have to give up when faced with tragedy.' NPR 'A wondrously entertaining novel... The Glass Hotel is never dull. Tracing the permutations of its characters' lives, from depressing apartments in bad neighborhoods to posh Dubai resorts to Manhattan bars, Colorado campgrounds, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is like following the intricate patterns on Moroccan tiles.' Slate 'Mandel's wonderful novel (after Station Eleven) follows a brother and sister as they navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt... This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness.' Publishers Weekly, starred

Reviews

No one can create beautiful, enmeshed, startlingly clever worlds the way Mandel does. A new novel by her is a cause for enormous, tumultuous celebration -- Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
A fascinating and affecting read -- Stylist
Elegant . . . beguiling . . . the joys of The Glass Hotel are participatory: piecing together the connections and intersections of Mandels human cartography, a treasure map ripped to pieces * Guardian *
Beautifully written and compelling, it will find its way straight to your heart. -- Red
A damn fine novel . . . she keeps me turning pages . . . haunting and evocative and immersive . . . I guess you can say I am a big Emily St. John Mandel fanboy -- George R R Martin, author of A Game of Thrones
A beguiling tale about skewed morals, reckless lives and necessary means of escape . . . immersive -- The Economist
I've waited five long years for this - and it was absolutely worth it . . . [A] stunning and meandering story full of beautiful prose . . . an extraordinary read -- Prima, Book of the Month
A mysterious and delicate book . . . The Glass Hotel beautifully depicts the many lives impacted by the collapse of an ambitious Ponzi scheme * Elle Magazine (USA) *
The bestselling author of Station Eleven returns with this tale about the relationship between a New York financier, his waiter lover, a threatening note and a mysterious disappearance -- Times, Best books of 2020
Deeply imagined, philosophically profound . . . The Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its characters continually on the run . . . Richly satisfying . . . as immersive a reading experience as its predecessor, finding all the necessary imaginative depth within the more realistic confines of its world . . . Revolutionary -- Ruth Franklin * The Atlantic *
The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker... Freshly mysterious... Mandel is a consummate, almost profligate world builder. One superbly developed setting gives way to the next, as her attention winds from character to character, resting long enough to explore the peculiar mechanics of each life before slipping over to the next... That Mandel manages to cover so much, so deeply is the abiding mystery of this book. The 300 pages of The Glass Hotel work harder than most 600-page novels... The disappointment of leaving one story is immediately quelled by our fascination in the next... The complex, troubled people who inhabit Mandels novel are vexed and haunted by their failings, driven to create ever more pleasant reflections of themselves in the glass. -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
The question of what is realbe it love, money, place or memoryhas always been at the heart of Ms. Mandels fiction... Her narratives snake their way across treacherous, shifting terrain. Certainties are blurred, truth becomes malleable and in The Glass Hotel the con man thrives... Lyrical, hypnotic images... suspend us in a kind of hallucinatory present where every detail is sharply defined yet queasily unreliable. A sense of unease thickens... Ms. Mandel invites us to observe her characters from a distance even as we enter their lives, a feat she achieves with remarkable skill. And if the result is a sense not only of detachment but also of desolation, then maybe thats the point. -- Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
An eerie, compelling follow-up... not your grandmothers Agatha Christie murder mystery or haunted hotel ghost story... The novels ongoing sense of haunting extends well beyond its ghosts... The ghosts in The Glass Hotel are directly connected to its secrets and scandals, which mirror those of our time... Like all Mandels novels, The Glass Hotel is flawlessly constructed... The Glass Hotel declares the world to be as bleak as it is beautiful, just like this novel. -- Rebecca Steinitz, The Boston Globe
Mandels wonderful novel (after Station Eleven) follows a brother and sister as they navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt . . . This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Another tale of wanderers whose fates are interconnected . . . nail-biting tension . . . Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story . . . A gorgeously rendered tragedy. * Booklist, starred *
Long-anticipated . . . At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical . . . In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure. A strange, subtle, and haunting novel. * Kirkus Reviews, starred *
The Glass Hotel is as tightly constructed as a detective fiction, with its mysteries, apparently discrete events leading to revelations, dire consequences . . . a superb performance * Sydney Morning Herald *
Beautifully written * The i *
A flawless tale of schadenfreude and Ponzi schemes, greed, depression and addiction. I loved the main setting on Vancouver Island, a place wild and safe and sinister at the same time * Sunday Times (South Africa) *
An elegant, haunting story . . . a unique rumination on guilt, grief and regret * The Times *

Author Bio

Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her novels are Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, The Lola Quartet, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. She lives in New York City.