Sometimes this is done through chapters with recurring titles. The novel’s multiple, at times complex changes in locale, perspective and time are signalled and made smooth through corresponding stylistic shifts. Even so, she does not dislike him she just does not feel any passion for him. Her relationship with Alkaitis is transactional: acting as arm candy over drinks with investors strikes Vincent as a reasonable trade-off for days spent shopping at Barneys and, more importantly, for security. A habit, begun after her mother’s death, of soothing herself by shooting five-minute videos of people-less images comes in handy filling long, dull hours in what she comes to view as the kingdom of money. Until she met Alkaitis while bartending at his grand but remote glass-and-cedar-beam Vancouver Island hotel, Vincent had been metaphorically adrift.
A proper explanation is to come, but when it’s revealed early on that Vincent’s own mother drowned when she was 13, we do twig to a certain circularity. That this gilded existence is not to last is powerfully hinted at in the novel’s opening pages, set 10 years later, which describe Vincent sliding down the side of a container ship before plunging, Icarus-like, into stormy seas. During the good times, Vincent bounces between opulent display cases: a sprawling mansion in the Connecticut suburbs and a pied-à-terre in Manhattan. One of those lives belongs to Vincent, Alkaitis’s young Canadian trophy wife. Their point of connection is Jonathan Alkaitis, a Bernie Madoff-like financier who lands in prison after his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme is finally exposed, but not before lives are affected, and, in some cases, ruined.
Set in the decades on either side of the mid-aughts, The Glass Hotel strongly resembles its predecessor in mood and approach, flitting among a group of interlinked, but geographically and at times chronologically disparate characters. It’s unclear whether that will still happen, but I think we can all agree that a pandemic-themed series being delayed by a pandemic is a level of meta-ness none of us needs right now. An HBO series based on the novel was slated to air this year. John Mandel has an advantage: Her previous book, Station Eleven (2014), a cross-border bestseller, was set in the aftermath of a viral pandemic – a topic with some resonance these days.
Launching a book during a pandemic is challenging, but unlike many authors, Emily St. The Glass Hotel Handout/HarperCollins/Courtesy of manufacturer
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