The Glass Hotel
On a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, a bartender named Vincent works at the luxurious, fog-wrapped Hotel Caiette, where a graffito appears overnight on the glass lobby wall: Why don't you swallow broken glass. Among the night's guests is Jonathan Alkaitis, a New York financier who will, in a few years, turn out to be running a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme that ruins thousands of lives. The novel spirals outward from that evening across decades and continents, following the bartender, the cons, the investors, and a shipping executive's wife whose fortune is tied up in the scheme, circling around a single question of what it means to disappear. Emily St. John Mandel's novel pairs the mosaic structure of Station Eleven with a meditation on money, regret, and ghost logic.
Themes & atmosphere
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What you might want to know about The Glass Hotel
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Vincent tends bar at a luxury hotel on a remote British Columbia island when financier Jonathan Alkaitis offers her a new life. The novel follows her into Alkaitis's Manhattan world, the collapse of his Ponzi scheme, and the lives of the investors he ruined.
Yes. The Glass Hotel shares a connected world with Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility. Characters cross over. Each book stands on its own. Emily St. John Mandel has called the three a loose triptych.
Loosely. The Glass Hotel was inspired by Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Emily St. John Mandel has said the financial-fraud arc draws on real cases, though the specific characters and events are invented.
The Glass Hotel was written by Emily St. John Mandel, published in 2020 by Knopf.
The Glass Hotel is 328 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Glass Hotel takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Glass Hotel is a standalone novel by Emily St. John Mandel, not part of a series.
The Glass Hotel is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.