The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
The front page of this weekend’s New York Times stares up from my coffee table. The headline demands attention: “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss”. What follows is single-line obituaries of Covid-19 fatalities from across the nation. Many who are sheltering in place see the pandemic from detached eyes — their lives remain untouched by the catastrophic death toll parts of the country are experiencing.
For me, this is the crux of the issue Emily St. John Mandel is exploring in her new novel, The Glass Hotel. How is it possible “...to both know and not know something” (223), and at what juncture do we see the collateral damage caused by our complacency?
Topically, The Glass Hotel is about money, or its ability to corrupt morally questionable individuals. It is hard to ignore the shades of similarity to Bernie Madoff, and his elaborate Ponzi Scheme that came crashing down in 2008. Jonathan Alkaitis, the fictional financier and architect of The Glass Hotel’s Ponzi, is a charismatic conman. His relationships appear crafted on pretense. Even his “wife” Vincent is not actually his wife. The rings are just a facade to help maintain the air of stability in Jonathan’s world. It is not just him. Mandel builds “shadowlives,” “counterlives,” and “ghost versions” of lives within her characters. In these alternate lives, she explores the infinite paths a life can travel depending on choices made, and chances not taken.
I greedily read and loved Mandel’s novel Station Eleven. My admiration of her work actually inspired me to pre-order The Glass Hotel. I latched on to the phrase painted on the Traveling Symphony’s caravan, “Survival is Insufficient.” It spoke to my own need to live life, not just pass through. This fleeting quality of life exhibits in The Glass Hotel as well...but differently. A worldwide pandemic that wipes out most of the population is the culprit in Station Eleven. In this novel, it is the fragility of the foundation that lives are built on. Vincent escapes the isolated town where she bartends to “the kingdom of money” as Jonathan’s “wife.” Here she can pursue her 5 minute video hobby, shop at her leisure, and travel on a whim. Alkatis, who loves her ease of adaptability in social settings, creates the facade of wealth and opportunity while stealing others’ life savings. Once jailed, the ghosts of dead victims of his Ponzi scheme confront him, haunting him with reminders of his actions. He creates a “counterlife” where he escaped punishment and is soothed by memories of his first marriage.
Ghosts occupy a great deal of space in The Glass Hotel. The wronged victims are not the first. Vincent’s mother lost at sea keeps resurfacing in her life, the band member who overdosed on Paul’s bad fix haunts him constantly, a “ghost fleet” of empty container ships come into play in Leon’s story. As the authorities are closing in on Oskar, an employee of Alkaitis’s, he creates “a ghost version” of events where he was the one to call the FBI when first approached to back date a transaction. The blurring of boundaries between corporeal and spiritual, guilt and responsibility, wealth and poverty, and ultimately life and death engender a surreal feeling of disorientation. Characters are not vilified for their actions or choices. They are explored.
I was initially confused when I noticed an overlap between the two books. Leon Prevant, the shipping executive who loses his life savings to the Ponzi scheme, was the first moment of deja vu. Prevant and his wife, Marie, abandon their house for life in an R.V. when all their money vanishes. They descend into the “shadowlands'' of poverty, and begin to “see” the reality of those around them. Who is seen and who is unseen becomes a dominant motif. Leon’s once assistant, later boss, is the next reprised character. Miranda, an artist who spends her free time drawing, was last seen in Station Eleven dying on a beach in Malaysia. These alternate realities for characters we have seen before seem to hint at Mandel’s ideas on the mutability of life.
The novel opens and closes with chapters entitled, “Vincent in the Ocean” which are set up like minutes counting down as she plummets from the side of the ship into the turbulent ocean below. Between these two stream-of-consciousness style frames, lies a chorus of grief, loss, and regret. But there are also glimpses of finding solace in living. Walter finds comfort in his solitary caretaker position at the hotel after the financial storm settles. Vincent goes to sea, and lives the happiest moments of her life. Leon and his wife find happiness in the “lightness” of their lives as they travel from job-to-job in their R.V. As they escape their constructed realities, they find truer versions of themselves.
Like the Hotel Caitte with its glass that is susceptible to the corruptions of outside forces, Mandel weaves a narrative that explores the fragility of our reality when confronted with possibilities, and the unintended consequences of certain choices. The characters, the setting, and the narrative arc all tenuously thread together in a way that is remote, yet intimate at the same time — much like the memorials in the NYT.
About Carrie Honaker
Carrie Honaker is a writer currently based in Panama City Beach, Florida. She studied Literature at Florida State University, but has worn many hats including restaurateur and teacher. Carrie is a voracious reader and kitchen sorcery addict who found her inner writer at the Blue Ridge Writing Project in 2010. Most days you can find her plowing through a book, writing or dabbling with a new recipe.
Carrie’s work has appeared in ALCA Lines, Virginia English Journal, and Digital Is. She also regularly writes about experiences in the classroom, moments in the kitchen, and all things travel & restaurants on her site, StrawbabiesandChocolateBeer.com. Currently, she is revising her foodoir about life growing up on a farm in Vermont interspersed with family recipes. You can find her on Twitter: @writeonhonaker, Instagram: @corkdorkva, on Goodreads & Trip Advisor.
