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The Glass Hotel

The haunting novel from the bestselling author of Station Eleven

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The Glass Hotel

By: Emily St John Mandel
Narrated by: Dylan Moore
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Summary

The New York Times bestselling novel, from the author of Station Eleven.
'A damn fine novel . . . haunting and evocative and immersive' George R R Martin, author of A Game of Thrones

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, just after a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, 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.

 Contemporary Contemporary Romance Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Mystery Romance Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime New York Heartfelt Suspense
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Critic 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)
Deeply imagined, philosophically profound . . . The Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its characters continually on the run . . . Richly satisfying . . . The Glass Hotel is ultimately as immersive a reading experience as its predecessor [Station Eleven], finding all the necessary imaginative depth within the more realistic confines of its world . . . Revolutionary. (Ruth Franklin)
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)
Beautifully written and compelling, it will find its way straight to your heart. (Red)
A fascinating and affecting read (Stylist)

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.

(Prima, Book of the Month)
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 Mandel’s 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 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. (Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal)
All stars
Most relevant
From the cover blurb, this isn’t the sort of book I would normally read but I was intrigued as a result of the author’s previous novel - Station Eleven - which I enjoyed for its simplicity and prescience. I was immediately drawn into The Glass Hotel - the simple yet elegant style of writing and intriguing central character: a young woman named Vincent, a social misfit albeit a beautiful one who tries to minimise risk in her life but ends up inadvertently at the central of it. However, I found the first half of the novel more engaging than the second as it moved away from Vincent and towards her much older husband who is the architect of a Ponzi scheme, a shipping merchant, and Vincent’s drug addict brother. I found these characters to be much less interesting, pathetic sorry-for-themselves types. This shift in focus had the effect of disengaging me from the story overall and no longer interested in Vincent’s fate.

Intriguing but eventually underwhelming

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Quite enjoyed this book. Only reason i did not give it a higher rating is because i can’t decide weather i liked any of the characters or not. I also found it jumped around a lot so found the plot quite difficult to keep up with in places. It was however an interesting setting and idea for a story.

Interisting story but hard plot to follow at times.

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This book is hard to categorise. It’s best approached with an open mind. It’s beautifully written and the story is well crafted. I was caught up in the characters and events all the way and didn’t want to leave the world created. I’ve enjoyed all of the author’s books. This is not like Station Eleven - which is for me still her best novel - but it is well worth listening to or reading. There is sadness and disappointment at its core with the recurring theme of a wistful longing for what might have been in an alternate scenario, but it’s not a depressing book by any means. The narrator is excellent and tells the story well, evoking the different characters convincingly.

Intriguing and Poignant - recommended

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This is a hugely engaging, deftly constructed story that drew me in again and again as I listened over the last month. It made journeys an adventure and quiet times a delight. Dylan Moore’s narration is pitch perfect (though I’m not sure she’s spent much time with Geordies ;0) I cannot recommend this more highly. A joy.

Superb. Complex, intriguing and beautifully read

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Great story & the US actor has a nice voice but can’t do any of the accents relevant to the story from Canadian to British & Australian. It’s a shame they didn’t use a Canadian actor.

Great story let down slightly by dodgy accents

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