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The Glass Hotel cover art

The Glass Hotel

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Dylan Moore
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Summary

The New York Times bestselling novel, from the author of Station Eleven.

Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. 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 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, just after a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.

Weaving together the lives of these characters, Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the towers 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.

©2020 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2020 Macmillan Digital Audio

Critic reviews

"Dylan Moore's cool, smooth narration carries listeners through this story of deception, betrayal, and the cost of guilt. Jonathan Alkaitis constructed the Ponzi scheme of the century, and the novel centers around the myriad ramifications of its collapse. Throughout the audiobook listeners are dropped into the minds of those who were drawn into his web as investors or as co-conspirators. Many are haunted, quite literally, by those impacted by their actions. This is a novel that drifts from one point of view to another, and Moore guides listeners through subtle shifts in tone and accent." (AudioFile, April 2020)

"A damn fine novel...haunting and evocative and immersive." (George R R Martin, author of A Game of Thrones)

What listeners say about The Glass Hotel

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great Story but I wish the narrator didn’t attempt accents

I loved this story, the writing was cohesive and intriguing and the the story was really gripping HOWEVER I wish that I’d read it with my own eyes instead of my ears as I found the narrators voice very grating and unemotional and she tried some bizarre accents such as québécois and Newcastle.. I found it hard to listen to such bad accents and it really spoiled the integrity of the book for me because it was comically like Dick Van Dyke awful.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Intriguing but eventually underwhelming

From the cover blurb, this isn’t the sort of book I would normally read but I was intrigued as a result of the author’s previous novel - Station Eleven - which I enjoyed for its simplicity and prescience. I was immediately drawn into The Glass Hotel - the simple yet elegant style of writing and intriguing central character: a young woman named Vincent, a social misfit albeit a beautiful one who tries to minimise risk in her life but ends up inadvertently at the central of it. However, I found the first half of the novel more engaging than the second as it moved away from Vincent and towards her much older husband who is the architect of a Ponzi scheme, a shipping merchant, and Vincent’s drug addict brother. I found these characters to be much less interesting, pathetic sorry-for-themselves types. This shift in focus had the effect of disengaging me from the story overall and no longer interested in Vincent’s fate.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

ZIG ZAG STORY WITH PLENTY OF CONTENT.....YET

A story covering many topics and proceeding down quite a few avenues

with all stories coming to a rather pointless end. nothing gained
I expected more catharsis toward the end but just more twist and turn writing.

I had to double back many a time because the timeline was obscure.

all in all not a bad story. JRVP recommendation..

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Clueless

I enjoyed Station Eleven by the same author, though it was a tad too sentimental for my taste, it was overall an original and interesting story about life after global collapse and its gentleness was a refreshing change from the manic mad max type of novel.
So I pounced on Glass Hotel with eagerness. Well I hardly feel able to write any sort of review since most of my listening time was spent in a fog of confusion having very little idea at all of what the story actually is about. The hotel itself sounds wonderful but barely gets mentioned and there just is scene after scene of cocktail bars and luxury flats and an army of characters none of whom I attached to and couldn’t tell apart anyway. The message scratched on the glass which is made much of held zero interest and made zero sense. An interesting brother who the story starts with is pushed to the background and the sister is as blank and unbelievable as a white wall and less interesting than watching paint dry.
Its eventual revealed that the jet set life styles are funded by a Ponzi scheme, and the story gets more interesting around the collapse of this but don’t even ask me what the outcome is as although I listened to it only a few days ago, I have literally no memory of most of this book, or how it ended.
So with apologies to the author, but a truly awful monotone narration of a story almost devoid of a coherent narrative thread gets a scant two stars from me.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great book - couldn't stop listening

A great story, beautifully written.

The references to shipping and the imagining of a terrible flu made me wonder if the characters in this book exist in the same universe as those in Station 11?????

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Ethereal and dreamy depiction of a ponzi fraud

I picked this book at random knowing nothing about it or the author and I am glad that I did. I never thought I would use the words dreamy and ethereal to describe a book that is about financial fraud but these are the first words that sprang to mind when I was listening. It is all a bit of an enigma how the various characters in this story fit together and it is best not to think about it too much and let it all wash over you as it all become apparent in the end. And it is really satisfying when it does.
We hear about inexplicable riches and wealth inside the bubble of the lifestyle reserved for business magnates and moguls and the inevitable crash when it all comes tumbling down. Riches and luxury can be surreal to those who experience this type of life for the first time (not that I would know) and we hear Vincent ruminate on her unlikely life as if she is in a trance for much of the book. Thankfully not much time is wasted explaining how Ponzi schemes work and how they are found out but there is enough here to give the reader / listener the gist of how those involved get away with it. Emily St. John Mandel is clearly a talented writer and I really enjoyed this. I will now seek out some of her earlier works, including the well reviewed Station Eleven.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Intriguing and Poignant - recommended

This book is hard to categorise. It’s best approached with an open mind. It’s beautifully written and the story is well crafted. I was caught up in the characters and events all the way and didn’t want to leave the world created. I’ve enjoyed all of the author’s books. This is not like Station Eleven - which is for me still her best novel - but it is well worth listening to or reading. There is sadness and disappointment at its core with the recurring theme of a wistful longing for what might have been in an alternate scenario, but it’s not a depressing book by any means. The narrator is excellent and tells the story well, evoking the different characters convincingly.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It’s ok, not as good as station 11

It’s ok not as good as station 11 if you know what I mean as such etc

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Asks more questions than it answers

Tricky one
I think I loved it
But it has a lazy meandering feel about the story that’s a bit unnerving
I think it would have been more pleasing with a punchy twist or reveal
It kind of grinds to a halt not having solved anything at all ?

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story and so well read

Beautiful story looking at all situations from all angles. Really great performance of the narrator.
Highly recommend as an audiobook

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