I really loved Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, a beautiful dystopian fiction that highlighted a magical quality in connecting disparate characters.
Some of that magic is present in her next novel The Glass Hotel, one I had been eagerly awaiting.
The Glass Hotel refers to a beautiful property on remote Caiette in Canada – a place where all the characters in the text meet at some point. So you have that same collection of loosely connected characters. Central is Vincent – beautiful and alone. She lives independently from a young age although she has an older brother who she is partially estranged from. One night as a bartender at the Hotel Caiette she meets Johnathan Alkaitis – a wealthy businessman who offers her a life of wealth and ease. A handful of years later, she disappears from a boat, a humble and anonymous cook. This is just one mystery the author poses, and then gradually reveals. The other occurs on the same night Vincent and Alkaitis meet – her brother writes a shocking message on a window for no apparent reason.
The background to all is rooted in both the past and the future – which is gradually unravelled by Mandel.
It’s a good solid novel – cleverly plotted but not quite as compelling as Station Eleven. It’s a novel that will spark your curiosity, but wont make it to your list of the compulsively readable.
Welloflostplots 
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