TheGlass Hotel

No one can create beautiful, enmeshed, startlingly clever worlds the way Mandel doesElegant, haunting . . . a unique rumination on guilt, grief and regretElegant . . . beguiling . . . the joys of The Glass Hotel are participatory: piecing together the connections . . . a treasure map ripped to piecesBeautifully written and compelling, it will find its way straight to your heart.A perfect post-lockdown read . . . Mandel is a terrific storytellerA 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. I look forward to whatever she writes next.A fascinating and affecting readA beguiling tale about skewed morals, reckless lives and necessary means of escape.

I've waited five long years for this - and it was absolutely worth it.
In this stunning and meandering story full of beautiful prose ... Set in Vancouver Island's dazzling surroundings, this is an extraordinary read.

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 disappearanceDeeply 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 [Station Eleven] . . . RevolutionaryThe perfect novel for your survival bunker . . . 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 . . . That Mandel manages to cover so much, so deeply is the abiding mystery of this bookThe Glass Hotel is as tightly constructed as a detective fiction, with its mysteries, apparently discrete events leading to revelations, dire consequences . . . a superb performanceThe question of what is real—be it love, money, place or memory—has always been at the heart of Ms. Mandel’s 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 that’s the point.An eerie, compelling follow-up... not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie murder mystery or haunted hotel ghost story... The novel’s 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 Mandel’s 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.A mysterious and delicate book . . . The Glass Hotel beautifully depicts the many lives impacted by the collapse of an ambitious Ponzi schemeAnother tale of wanderers whose fates are interconnected . . . nail-biting tension . . . Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story . . . A gorgeously rendered tragedy.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.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 carelessnessThe New York Times bestselling novel, from the author of Station Eleven.

From the author of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel is the story of the lives caught up in two very different tragedies: a woman disappearing from a container ship, and a massive Ponzi scheme imploding in New York.

'A perfect post-lockdown read' – Sunday Times
'Elegant, haunting' – The Times
'A damn fine novel . . . evocative and immersive' – George R. R. Martin

Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the exclusive Hotel Caiette. When New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis walks into the hotel and hands her his card, it is the beginning of their life together.

That same night, 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, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core.

When Alkaitis's investment fund is revealed to be a Ponzi scheme, Leon loses his retirement savings in the fallout, but Vincent seemingly walks away unscathed. Until, a decade later, she disappears from the deck of one of Leon's ships . . .

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