The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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.

Critical Praise
“Simply stunning, a boldly experimental work which hooks the reader from its first pages, wending to a powerfully emotional conclusion. . . . The Glass Hotel becomes stronger, and more powerful, with every page. . . . a compulsive read.” — Toronto Star

“Beguiling. . . . With its shattered narrative, the joys of The Glass Hotel are participatory: piecing together the connections and intersections of Mandel’s human cartography, a treasure map ripped to pieces.” — The Guardian

A striking book that's every bit as powerful — and timely — as its predecessor…Mandel's writing shines throughout the book, just as it did in Station Eleven. She's not a showy writer, but an unerringly graceful one, and she treats her characters with compassion but not pity. The Glass Hotel is a masterpiece, just as good — if not better — than its predecessor. It's a stunning look at how people react to disasters, both small and large, and the temptation that some have to give up when faced with tragedy. — Michael Shaub, NPR

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... — Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal

An eerie, compelling follow-up... not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie murder mystery or haunted hotel ghost story... The novel’s ongoing sense of haunting extends well beyond its ghosts... The ghosts in The Glass Hotel are directly connected to its secrets and scandals, which mirror those of our time... 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... specializes in fiction that weaves together seemingly unrelated people, places and things. The Glass Hotel... is no exception... Kaleidoscopic... Mandel dissects the surreal division between those who are conscious of ongoing crimes, and those who are unwittingly brought into them... The Glass Hotel... examine[s] how we respond to chaos after catastrophe. — Annabel Gutterman, Time

A careful, damning study of the forms of disaster humanity brings down on itself... In a world where rolling disasters fade into one another, it’s a reminder that Mandel wants to lurch us out of the tedium. — Hillary Kelly, Vulture

Long-anticipated... At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical... In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure. A strange, subtle, and haunting novel. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Another tale of wanderers whose fates are interconnected... nail-biting tension... Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story... A gorgeously rendered tragedy. — Booklist (starred review)

Paperback  320 pages

EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL is the author of five previous novels. The Glass Hotel was a #1 national bestseller, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favourite books of 2020, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. Station Eleven won the Toronto Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, has been translated into thirty-two languages, and will soon be a limited series on HBO Max. Mandel lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.