Our third and final book club of the year has arrived, and I’m excited to see what everyone has to think about Emily St. John Mandel’s latest The Glass Hotel.
For those of you who might be joining in for #CannonBookClub for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome, and you don’t need to be registered* for this year’s Read to speak your mind.
For the boilerplate: ground rules remain the same as they always have. The topics are numbered, and we ask that you refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversation topics they are looking for. Please try to have only one or two topics per comment – it helps build conversation. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to respond directly to them and also tell us about your own ponderings on the book. While we’ve never once had to do this and don’t expect to now, comments that are not germane to our discussion will be removed.
We will also be talking on our social media platforms over the course of the next two days, and in our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat, so feel free to wander over there throughout the course of today and tomorrow.
Without further ado…
Discussion Topics
- Mandel has stated in interviews that The Glass Hotel is a ghost story at the intersection of two events.What parts of the story struck you as a “ghost story”?
- In what ways was the theme of suffering used in the book? Who suffered and what did it tell us about them?
- The dynamics of estrangement are on display in the book, but what do they add to the story?
- There are several characters that defy expectations. What do these expectations say about the characters, what does it say about us?
- Wealth disparity is a big part of the book, people who grew up with money move through the world in a different way than those who didn’t.How did your own relationship with money effect your reading?
- One of Mandel’s signatures is transitions between characters for perspective. Does she succeed in giving a three dimensional look at the story?
- Antagonist vs. Villain. There are plenty of “bad” people in the book but are any of them villains? Are they antagonists? Are they both?
- I’ve got thoughts that don’t fit into the above categories, meet me in the comments.
We had a great discussion during our oddly specifically-timed reread of Mandel’s Station Eleven in March, and I look forward to your thoughts on this one. Comment away!
(*if you’re interested, you can still register for this year, just drop MsWas a line. Or watch out for CBR13 registration, coming in early December.)
6. It was 3 dimensional but also very clinical and distant from it all. I felt bad for the victims of the scheme, wanted more of something from Vincent as far as feelings towards, but I felt like overall I was numb to everyone emotionally. It was beautifully written but I should have been more angry about things. I also kind of feel like Paul ended up being rather pointless considering he was our intro into the story.
I also noticed this difference from Station Eleven, in that book we are *in* the world with the characters, in this one I felt like I was watching through a hazy glass (and it made this read go much slower than any of the times I read Station Eleven). I do wonder if it was on purpose, but even if it was I didn’t enjoy the sensation.
(6 and also 1) I think the distance was due to the opening and closing chapters about Vincent in the Ocean, “beginning at the end.”
I spent the rest of the novel hoping that end was not true, and I didn’t realize it until just now that I was haunted by that first chapter.
YES! I spent the whole time thinking it couldn’t be true- had to be more than what was presented
I remember my sense of sadness as I realized that it really would end the way it did.
I was at an emotional remove, too, except for the Pyramid stuff, which did genuinely piss me off. I didn’t really connect positively with any of the characters.
I feel the emotional distance, but I also enjoy how it’s presented in a greek chorus style: “THESE ARE BIG FEELINGS FOR YOU TO OBSERVE AND PONDER, BUT THEY ARE NOT FOR YOU TO FEEL- THEY ARE FOR US TO REPORT AND YOU TO DIGEST”
1. It’s been since April that I read this, so I don’t remember very much, but the only part I remember that could be ghost story related is when Vincent visits her brother after death in the street. I can’t remember specifics. The rest of the “ghost story” elements you can stretch and bend a little, and are more metaphorical. I felt like the main character and her brother both were sort of ghosts in their own life. They were constantly looking for purpose and happiness and never finding it. Vincent is also fixated on the death of her mother, which happens at the beginning of the book, also by boat, so their twin deaths by boat and twin ghosthoods sort of form the backbone of the story.
the hotel itself felt haunted, as did the unmoored denizens within. Even when alive Vincent felt ethereal
I made a rather lengthy post last night, and then my computer unexpectedly shut down and ate the whole comment, so now I’ll have to try to recreate it from memory.
With both of Emily St. John Mandel’s books that we’ve covered for book club, I knew next to nothing about them before I read them. I was pretty sceptical to Station Eleven before I read it back before the first book club and ended up absolutely loving it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about The Glass Hotel and I suspect the main reason is that I didn’t feel for or engage with any of the characters.
As several others have already pointed out, there is a distance placed between the reader and the characters. I was angry and disgusted by the actions by all the people running the Ponzi scheme, ruining so many people’s lives, but at the same time, I didn’t really care about those of the victims that we read about. I kept reading to find out what would happen, and to see how it all tied together, but I wasn’t emotionally engaged.
In Station Eleven, I was deeply upset when Miranda got infected and went down to the beach to die (unexpected fun twist to see her cameo in this, an alternate world where the Georgia flu didn’t become a lethal pandemic that wiped out most of humanity). Here I didn’t really care about Vincent, or anyone else. I found Paul annoying from his very first chapters, and certainly didn’t gain any more sympathy for him as the story progressed.
It’s a beautifully written book, and St.John Mandel’s skill kept me reading it. Yet it felt like I was listening to someone telling a story about something they’d read or heard from someone else. There were too many layers of removal between me and the story, and I’ve come to realise that I need to engage with the plot and the characters to really like a book.
I was so pleased with this Miranda cameo- in the moment, at least. Looking back now, having Miranda around only made me more disappointed that it “wasn’t another station eleven”- which I know is unfair to the author, but the heart wants what it wants!
5. I think Narfna brought it up in their review back in April, then it continued to come up in conversations as other reviews rolled in- but it was a daunting task to read about financial peril while in the depths of a pandemic-based economic downturn- similar to re-reading Station Eleven as Covid began to take hold of the entire world.
I grew up without money, but my parents did everything they could to pretend our situation was otherwise. At times it helped, at times it hurt, but I definitely exist now in a state of near-constant financial panic after growing up pretending that peril was not always on the doorstep. I’m ok now, and I was lucky to be in a field deemed essential and in a workplace where our executive team took FAR better care of us and our students than the federal government did, but I was still in an anxiety fog throughout the read- worried for characters, worried for friends, worried for family- always unnecessarily worried about myself.
Back in my review I talked about how if this hadn’t been written by Emily St. John Mandel I would not have read it, and I stand by that statement still because I do not like to read/watch/listen to media that revolves around financial gambles. Hell, I don’t gamble- HEARING about casinos makes me sweat.
Yes, the money stuff gave me anxiety! I thought about writing about it here but that gave me anxiety, too!
I honestly would never have read this, either, if it wasn’t written by Emily St. John Mandel. She took one genre I dislike (post-apocalyptic) and made it lovely, so I trusted her, but it didn’t quite work out like I wanted.
7. Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Jonathan Alkiaitis is a villain. If there’s any doubt, the fact that he scams people who are allegedly his friends pushes him into villain territory. (Bernie Madoff is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence. His lawyers might be trying to make a case for “not a villain,” but nobody’s buying it).
I think what’s more interesting are the other characters who are complicit in the crimes and where they fall on the scale. Does the employee who wrote a confession and cooperated with authorities get a pass? Does being super gullible free one of guilt? I especially liked how one employee summed it up: “It’s possible to both know and not know something.”
I recently finished this book, and while I will say I love the author’s voice, ultimately I wondered what the point of the book was. I like that Emily has this view of the world where so many people and events are intertwined, and I honestly enjoyed reading the book. But in the end it felt like more of a character study than a novel, and I began to wonder if the author had ever met someone that was truly happy – even for just a few moments – as all of her characters seemed haunted by the past, by bad decisions, by loss. I don’t regret reading the book, and I look forward to reading future efforts, but I enjoyed Station Eleven much better.
Perhaps you should stop reading her novels. Station 11 is the outlier— her other novels are much more like this one. I love her writing and I like the glimpse into the lives of complex characters. But you’re right, none of them are very happy. Lives are difficult; bad choices are made—some people’s lives are like that. You wouldn’t want to read them all in a row!
Thanks for the insight. I believe Emily is an extremely gifted author and there’s a lot about her writing that I admire. But if Glass Hotel is more indicative of her work than Station 11 (which also had the dystopia aspect that I like in some books), you’re right, I might not enjoy her other books. I’ve found a few authors I really connect to, but I’ve also found books I connected to that were the exception to the authors’ other works rather than the rule. Still, I’ll probably read at least one more of Emily’s books, since I do admire her skill.