It's an odd and unsettling coincidence that Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, THE GLASS HOTEL, is being published the same week that vast numbers of Americans --- not to mention millions worldwide --- are being affected by a global pandemic. Such a pandemic --- and the near-apocalyptic fallout from it --- was the focus of Mandel’s prior book, STATION ELEVEN. Here’s hoping her imaginary vision was not a prophetic one.

In THE GLASS HOTEL, Mandel looks not to the near future but rather to the recent past. At the center of the story is a Ponzi scheme whose timing (collapsing as a result of the 2008 financial crisis), structure and catastrophic consequences resemble the Bernie Madoff fiasco that bankrupted countless organizations and individual investors. Here, the Madoff-like figure, Jonathan Alkaitis, is not really the focus of the narrative --- although the scenes of him navigating his incarceration while possibly coping with early dementia are haunting. Instead, Mandel turns her attention to Alkaitis’ much younger girlfriend (who most believe to be his wife), a woman named Vincent.

"[Mandel's] writing is perceptive and expressive, constructing a novel that is simultaneously complex and compelling, worthy of either a slow read or a breathless one."

Readers first encounter Vincent at the novel’s opening, which ironically seems to show her at the end of her life, pitching over the side of an enormous container ship near the close of 2018, 10 years after the collapse of Alkaitis’ fund. Mandel then takes readers decades into the past, introducing them to a much younger Vincent and her troubled brother, Paul, as they grow up on an isolated part of Vancouver Island.

It turns out that Alkaitis owns a hotel in that area, and both Vincent and Paul work there one summer. A single memorable and unnerving evening seems to set in motion events that lead not only to Vincent’s involvement with Alkaitis but also to the entire trajectory of Paul’s life.

THE GLASS HOTEL moves backward and forward in time, shifting voice and perspective in a way that helps highlight coincidences and broaden one’s perspective. Readers will enjoy piecing together the fragments and clues that Mandel leaves for them. Not everything is explainable, though, and --- especially near its evocative ending --- plenty is left open for interpretation.

The ambiguity of the book’s final scenes is certainly fitting, given its overall themes of reality and its illusory nature, of the impermanence and fragility of safety and security, of the naiveté of trusting anyone. Mandel shows, in countless ways, just how tenuous our lives can be, how easily illusions evaporate and relationships dissolve. Her writing is perceptive and expressive, constructing a novel that is simultaneously complex and compelling, worthy of either a slow read or a breathless one.