From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating
novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate
events-a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious
disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
Vincent is a
bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the
northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan
Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass
wall: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” High above
Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an
international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through
clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it
obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had
been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years
later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange
occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a
container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating
story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers
through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless,
underground electronica clubs, the business of international
shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison.
Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating
portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended
consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our
lives.