Synopsis
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.
'Beguiling' – The Guardian
'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 . . .
Details
Reviews
“No one can create beautiful, enmeshed, startlingly clever worlds the way Mandel does”Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
“Lyrical, hypnotic images . . . suspend us in a kind of hallucinatory present where every detail is sharply defined yet queasily unreliable.”Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
“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.”Rebecca Steinitz, The Boston Globe
“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 review)
