The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Paul has felt lost since the loss of his parents, which has sent him back to his half-sister, Vincent, who apparently feels equally lost. They have never been close, and this attempt to reconnect – or really just Paul’s attempt to find a place to temporarily land – is clearly failing as well. It seems they are just too deep into their own suffering, dealing with their own traumas and mistakes. But at some point, they both find themselves working temporarily in the same hotel on a tiny island off of Vancouver where an incident there launches the two of them into very different and strange directions, from the eye of a scandalous hurricane.

While this book begins with an eerie, atmospheric tone, where it is hard to distinguish the fog of the tiny island setting from that inside Paul’s brain, it gradually moves into more vivid imagery as the setting moves to more urban locations. Further, as the story expands to include more characters, we begin to hear the story from the perspective of those other characters, hearing their voices as they hear them, and seeing their visions as they see them. This is an unusual and effective means of keeping the reader so engaged in the story that we are actually blindsided to the scale of the underlying scandal and subplot when it actually comes to light.

I think what rings out here is the theme of honesty/dishonesty – with oneself and with others. A character is asked at one point if one can know something and not know something at the same time. I say no, not if one is being honest. One can know something and deny it, sublimate it, cover it up, even possibly forget it – but once someone knows something, one cannot honestly un-know something. The most honest character here is Vincent, who is true to herself in many ways. She does know, for example, that the relationship she becomes involved with – with a much older and very wealthy man – is transactional and that she’s entered the “kingdom of money” as she refers to it. She knows she is acting, that it is temporary, that it is not real. She wears a wedding ring, but they are not married – a symbol of their fakeness. Even the best friend she acquires during this time becomes someone who ultimately sees her as invisible.

I would definitely recommend this read – there are so many layers to this story and it is engaging to the end. The characters are steeped in their own psychological battles, while the plot circles around them like a tornado pulling them all into one communal disaster. While you can see it coming, you still can’t bear to look away.