Review – The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 321 pages
Publisher:‎ Vintage
Release Date: March 24, 2020
ASIN: B07RL58ZDG
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from library
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis’s billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone novel. I borrowed this on ebook from the library.

Thoughts: I really loved the beginning of this book; following Vincent’s life is fascinating. I didn’t enjoy the last part of the book as much because it felt like the story was a bit lost. This is the second Emily John St. Mandel book I have read. Previous to this I read “Sea of Tranquility” and enjoyed that book slightly more than this one.

Vincent is a bartender at a remote but exclusive hotel. That is until she meets Alkaitis, the hotel owner, and strikes a deal with him to be his fake wife. What she doesn’t know is that Alkanitis is running a long but dangerous business scheme that will change her life and the lives of his investors forever.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book where we follow Vincent and her life. I want to say she has a carefree life, but I think it’s more “go with the flow”. She kind of drifts from the initial squalor she lives in during college to her job at the bar, to her privileged life with Alkaitis, and then to her job as a chef on a boat. She seems to have a sort of ambivalence to her own life that is fascinating; there is no plan, there are no goals…she just is. This is so opposite of how I have lived my life up to this point that I found it fascinating and engaging.

As the story continues on the focus shifts more to Alkaitis and his investors. For this part of the story we find out what Alkaitis did, and hear from his various co-conspirators, and from some of the people effected by his schemes. I enjoyed this porrtion of the book less. There is an investigator hired to find out more about Vincent but this felt like an afterthought. I just didn’t engage with these characters as well, and the story started to feel very unfocused to me.

I enjoy St. John Mandel’s writing style which is descriptive and a bit dreamy but still engaging. I was sucked in to the story immediately. However, as the number of points of view increased, the story started to feel more and more dispersed, and by the end I was at a bit of a loss about the point of the story. I guess it doesn’t need to have a point, it just left me feeling dissatisfied.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this but I enjoyed the first half a lot more than the second half. I loved the story of Vincent’s rather ambivalent take on her own life, but liked the story less when it started jumping between a lot of different people and focusing on the aftermath of Alkaitis’s deception. This was an interesting read, but I liked “Sea of Tranquility” better. I do plan on reading “Station Eleven” at some point as well.