Summary:
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, Vincent’s half-brother, Paul, scrawls a note on the windowed 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 from the hotel bar 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 northern Vancouver Island, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.
My take: 3 looks
Hmmmm. I have to think about this one for a bit.
***4 days later***
Okay. Let’s see if I can put this into words.
The novel is beautifully written and constructed. It’s like constructing a 3D puzzle when you don’t really know what the outcome will / should be. You have no “finished” picture, and the pieces all seem to be very different, not making it evident how they will fit together.
Let me explain by giving you a small dose of the characters.
Vincent, an odd name for a girl, has lost a parent to drowning, dropped out of school, moved in with an aunt who eventually tosses her out, becomes a bartender, marries a billionaire, then becomes a cook at sea. Oh, yeah, and the book begins with her falling into the ocean.
Paul is Vincent’s step-brother, a drug addict, a front-of-house hotel employee, eternal wanderer, and composer.
Leon is a shipping businessman, investor, investigator, and eventually lives in an RV with his wife.
Jonathan is a younger brother, a widower, a legitimate businessman, billionaire, Ponzi scheme creator, and prisoner.
Okay, that’s enough. But, there are more. Many more. Elsa, Walter, Oskar, Olivia, and others. And therein lies the problem for me. Too much. Way too much.
There is also the Hotel Caiette, for which the book is named. Positioned to be a jewel in the wilderness, the only way to get to the hotel is by boat. A boat manned, at least temporarily, by Vincent’s roommate/best friend/druggie. The hotel serves as the hub at which the characters intersect.
The way the puzzle pieces fit together is beautiful, and the author does a wonderful job of taking a tiny moment which, at the time, seems insignificant to the reader, and weaving it into the larger story. There are several “Ahhh” moments when reading. However, there is so very much going on, from the opening chapter which sets up the book in what I thought was a confusing manner, to the ending chapter, which is a continuation of the opening chapter. See?
There is the Ponzi scheme and how it affects the various players. To elicit sympathy for these victims of the scheme, we have to have some backstory, making so many backstories that they lose their meaning and importance. New characters continue to be introduced right up to the end, illustrating how they are involved in and affected by the corruption. And the Ponzi scheme is a very small part of the overall story. But it comes and goes, like waves in the ocean, with other storylines.
And don’t forget about the ghosts. Yep, there are hauntings, as well. It’s just too much.
But, maybe that’s what Mandel intended. Perhaps her novel was not meant to be a tidy retelling of the Madoff scandal. Perhaps she wanted to illustrate how people revolve in and out, over and under, around and about. Maybe there was not supposed to be a tidy ending, but the lingering feeling that life goes on all around us, even when ours stops. It’s feasible that readers are meant to explore the boundaries of responsibility, and how far-reaching our smallest actions can be. The idea that nothing happens in a void. Again, it’s possible that being a chameleon, the ability to adjust and adapt, was at the core of Mandel’s tale.
And that’s why I struggled to write a review. Because in the end, despite the author’s intentions, I grasped no real takeaway. The ghosts simply confused things for me, since there weren’t enough to become mystical realism, and there were too many to think that the guilt of the living took the form of haunting. There were too many characters to feel empathy for any one of them. And yet, the writing is so melodic and beautiful. The tapestry of the story is so beautifully constructed. But, in the end, there were too many discordant pieces, keeping me from enjoying the whole.
I am giving this one 3 looks because Mandel is a gifted writer; however, I am sad to say that it is not recommended.
