innerweststreetlibrarian's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Drug abuse, Addiction, and Alcohol
Moderate: Cancer, Terminal illness, Grief, Chronic illness, Dysphoria, Classism, Death of parent, Panic attacks/disorders, and Sexual content
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
theotheleo's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Graphic: Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Drug abuse
Moderate: Confinement and Death of parent
Minor: Cancer, Medical content, and Death
chalkletters's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
For readers going in without reading the blurb, The Glass Hotel takes a little while to get underway. Paul and Vincent are interesting enough characters, with interesting enough things going on in their lives, but it all feels a bit scattershot until it becomes clear that Jonathan Alkaitis’s story is going to give the plot its driving force. Once that clicks into place, The Glass Hoteljust keeps getting better and better, leading to an ending that both wraps things up and leaves a lot of open questions.
Emily St. John Mandel handles the mysteries of The Glass Hotel with an extremely deft hand. In particular, the question of the graffiti — who painted it? why? why those words? — is paid off in stages which each build on the last until they form a complete and completely satisfying picture. There are also element in the endings of Jonathan, Vincent and Paul’s stories which echo things from the very beginning, which suggests The Glass Hotel would be a satisfying reread!
The Glass Hotel certainly delivers on atmosphere. The tension, once you’ve worked out what’s going to happen, carries you along so well that it’s a shame the beginning doesn’t quite feel connected.
Overall, an extremely good book!
Moderate: Addiction, Death, Drug use, and Grief
Minor: Domestic abuse, Terminal illness, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Cancer, and Dementia
prettiestwhistles's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Drug abuse and Drug use
Moderate: Death of parent, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Cancer, Classism, Confinement, Cursing, and Terminal illness
Minor: Alcohol, Body shaming, Misogyny, and Sexual content
whirl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Moderate: Death of parent, Drug abuse, Addiction, Grief, Drug use, Confinement, and Death
Minor: Cancer
sar_a_i's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Confinement, Drug abuse, Grief, Dementia, and Drug use
Moderate: Terminal illness, Alcohol, Sexism, Addiction, and Cancer
nmiall's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Cancer, Dementia, and Addiction
jesshindes's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I'm not sure what I expected when I started reading, but I think it was something more sci-fi or more definitively speculative than I found. There are elements of the speculative - a series of ghosts who appear and whose reality isn't quite certain, a shift into possible worlds theory that includes a shout-out to Station Eleven - but broadly speaking, Mandel's novel operates in a world recognisable as our own, or something close to it. The book centres around Jonathan Atreides, a financier closely modelled on Bernie Madoff, the collapse of whose Ponzi scheme affects the lives of the constellation of other characters whose histories and perspectives move in and out of focus over the course of the book.
Technically, I thought this novel was super-accomplished. Mandel hops around chronologically as well as geographically, and shifts perspective between a large number of different characters without ever becoming boring or confusing. (I found myself thinking of Maggie Shipstead's Great Circle, another book I read this year which did great things with a big narrative sweep.) It's also very emotionally compelling: there are several moments that were shocking, moving, upsetting. I believed in the book and its characters, and I cared about what happened to them. I also specifically appreciated the fact that Mandel gave an acknowledgement to her nanny for looking after her daughter while she wrote the novel. It takes a village, guys!
With that said, I find the idea of fraud and Ponzi schemes super stressful so the book disturbed me! But that is not Mandel's fault and is probably more of a testament to the realism and emotional effectiveness of her writing. However, I went and read up on Bernie Madoff after finishing it and thought it was interesting how very closely the novel stuck to the details of Madoff's real-life story. When you're using a recent, real-life event like that I think it's worth asking what the fiction is adding to the existing facts. Mandel says in the afterword that she was particularly interested in the team of staff working for Madoff, who went to work every day in the knowledge that their whole workplace was built on lies, and I think that's definitely an interesting topic, but I didn't feel like that was necessarily what I would have picked out as the central subject of the book. Yes, the team is in it and there's a section where they are the main focus, but they're not really the central characters. However, I suppose 'The Glass Hotel' is about (a lot about) the different ways that people see us, and the way we see ourselves, and the different people we can be or become or inhabit over the course of our lives, and so that does make sense in a novel about fraud. Anyway, I would recommend this one and I look forward to seeing how it intersects with the follow-up.
Moderate: Addiction and Cancer
daniellemjoyce's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Drug use, Drug abuse, Death, Cancer, Death of parent, and Dementia
wormgirl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Drug abuse and Addiction
Moderate: Cancer, Terminal illness, and Death of parent