The Glass Hotel

A Novel

By: Emily St. John Mandel

Narrated by: Dylan Moore

GILLER PRIZE FINALIST

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. The owner of the hotel is New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis. 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 message on the 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 and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later, Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.

Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers 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.

Interesting story. Unfortunately, poor performance.

The accents were truly terrible. The French Canadian sounded Russian, etc. Still, a good book.

Close to the perfect book....

I started listening to Emily St. John Mandel's novels because of Station 11. I'm now finished four of her novels; this one is close to perfect. She is the master of multiple timelines and character narratives. I'm so glad I came across her work...so, so good!

Probably a better read than audiobook

There are a lot of characters and it jumps around in time a lot. I prefer more sequentiality told stories and found this one hard to follow. The topic of ponzi schemes was hard to relate to. I think the author is trying to say a lot in this book. To much. It will only be memorable in that it was so difficult to stick with and so completely disappointing in its ending. Overall a pretty depressing story.

Nothing Happens

I stuck with this because it was recommended to me, but I have no idea what I just listened to. way too many different characters and too much jumping around in time, between different people and even someone's imagination. I have no idea what this book was supposed to be about. I couldn't even name more than 3 or 4 of the main characters. I want those hours of my life back.