Fiction Review: The Glass Hotel

I'm a little late for the party (of course), but after reading Station XI , I loved it (my review is in the link). So I was very excited when Emily published another novel after St. John Mandel, but as usual it took me a while to read The Glass Hotel . My husband gave it to me for Christmas and I swallowed it last month. I was completely immersed in the story and did not want it to end.

This novel revolves around the life of a young woman named Vincent who grew up in a small remote town on the outskirts of Vancouver Island. When Vincent was fourteen years old, his mother took him in a canoe and disappeared, which radically changed the course of Vincent's life. His father was on business, so Vincent went to live with his aunt in Vancouver. At the age of seventeen, he lived alone with a friend in a small apartment. When a very luxurious hotel with glass walls is built in their small town, Caiette, the two young women get jobs there and return home. Vincent was a bartender at the Coyote Hotel when he first met Jonathan, the hotel's wealthy owner. He takes her back in time, where they acted like a married couple (even though they never actually got married). Vincent hated the big Connecticut estate where he swam in the infinity pool every day, so he spent a lot of time in Manhattan, shopping and leading a luxurious life. One day, a disaster strikes and Jonathan's business - and his life - collapses, causing Vincent to disappear again. He made a new life for himself by cooking on a giant container ship. Things go full circle when one of Jonathan's fraud victims is hired to investigate the mysterious death of a woman from a container ship (no spoilers as the novel begins with the sinking of the ship Vincent).

It's one of those books where the plot doesn't get the novel done right. I was completely immersed in the first page of this original story and spent some time figuring out what made Mandel's novel so interesting. The bright element is the character. They are really big, quirky and friendly. There's something about Vincent that somehow escapes his aimless life that's hard to pin down. And not just Vincent. The chapters are told by a variety of characters, including Vincent, Jonathan, Vincent's candid brother Paul, and other supporting characters that fit the story, enabling the reader to experience the whole story from multiple perspectives. Another thing I like about Mandel's novels is the unexpected connection, the way one character somehow connects with another in a distant time and place, or how two characters can unexpectedly cross paths. And of course, the writing is subtle and central, which makes his novels so special. I loved everything about this wonderful novel and did not want to end it.

Emily's new novel St. John Mandel's Calm Sea is out this month and I can not wait to read it! I will not wait years this time. A friend told me it mentions some of the characters from The Glass Hotel - an even more unexpected connection!

301 pages, antique

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This book is part of the following 2022 Reading Challenge :

TBR Mountain Challenge

Travel the world in books - Canada (Vancouver)

Literary Escape Challenge - Connecticut

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Listen here to excerpts from the audiobook , from the beginning of the novel and a chapter of Paul, and / or download from the song. That sounds good!

 

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