The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
As a highly anticipated release, The Glass Hotel (Knopf) by Emily St. John Mandel has appeared on several “best of March 2020 releases” booklists. Its subject matter — a Ponzi scheme and the 2008 economic collapse — along with its eerily coincidental timing create some tragic parallels to the real world’s current economic crisis. (Not to mention that Mandel’s last novel, Station Eleven, centered on a global flu pandemic.) Whether that brings more people to this choice is unclear. But what is clear is that this is one compelling read.
The Glass Hotel brings together two seemingly unrelated events and characters. What do a young Canadian hotel bartender and a middle-aged Wall Street entrepreneur have to do with each other? Further, what connection exists between a Ponzi scheme and an act of hotel vandalism? Mandel weaves these two seemingly disparate stories together in a manner that could only be described as “six degrees of separation.” Throughout the novel, we’re introduced to characters that are affected by these events or within the orbit of the two main characters—Vincent Smith, the female bartender with the strange name, and Johnathan Alkaitis, the man with the unusually profitable investment plan. Each of the secondary characters has a story to tell and a space to fill in Mandel’s world, building the story by each layer of their life they reveal.
However, the characters aren’t the only vehicle for the story. With each character, there’s a sense of place as they move through their lives. Readers will most likely observe a setting in this novel that they have never seen or even thought about in real life. From the staff areas of a transport ship to an off-season RV park, each character’s life can be seen not just through what they do, but also where they are.
The beginning of the novel is essentially the end of the story. As in, these characters’ fates have been sealed when the reader reads the first line. Mandel then goes back and forth through time and from one character’s point of view to another to reveal to the reader what happened with each of these characters. By the end, it is the reader who’s been transformed and enlightened, and unwittingly so. This is part of the magic of this novel.
The Glass Hotel is magnificently crafted, weaving incidents, characters and settings together to bring the reader into what becomes an educational experience. Inevitably, the reader will internally reference Bernie Madoff, which for most is our current real-life Ponzi reference, as the similarities between Alkaitis and Madoff are extremely close. But unlike the Madoff scheme, which most readers probably watched from afar on news shows and docudramas with fascination and a rudimentary knowledge of the financial fraud scandal, in The Glass Hotel we are brought into the inner workings of a Ponzi scheme via Mandel’s cast of characters. Seeing the collapse of the Ponzi and its aftermath through the eyes of the perpetrators, the victims and the indirectly affected gives the reader a view that is unmatched.
Coincidences aside, The Glass Hotel is rightfully on those coveted “best of” lists. Reading it is not just entertainment; it’s an eye-opening, transformative experience.
A book worth reading for enlightenment and education, and one that broadens your reading horizon.