I take my hat off to the author for pulling together such a myriad of tales using what can reasonably be described as quite ‘dry’ material and yet managing to make this into a compelling tale filled with mystery, sadness and unexpected depth. The characters are so well imagined that I feel like I know them and the strong emotions that this creates really contributes to the overall experience. It goes back and forth between people and times and yet it all comes together in perhaps one of the most satisfying ways I’ve ever encountered. I read this in one day, ignoring the everyday mundane banalities such as eating or chores and in fact staying up until the wee hours to finish it and even though I was shattered when I eventually crashed into bed I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I feel like I’ve been mesmerized or hypnotised or some special magic has been worked.
To be blunt, I simply can’t believe how much I enjoyed this story. And yet, here I find myself absolutely loving this book and wanting to wax lyrical about it. On the face of it a story spread over a couple of decades with a backdrop that examines the financial crisis of 2008 particularly centring on ponzi schemes couldn’t sound less appealing to me even if it tried. So, I’m going to focus on other things here and it’s all going to be positive. ‘From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.’ So, basically, I’m not going to talk about the plot at all because I think at best I would end up tying myself in knots and at worst maybe even discourage others from reading this because of my botched attempt at summarising the gist of the story.
In fact, if somebody was to try and give me an idea of what The Glass Hotel was about I think it would probably come across really badly and I’d undoubtedly run a mile.
I didn’t read the description and when I picked up the book I’d only read a couple of reviews and had very little idea what to expect, although I was becoming a little nervous because on the face of it the premise seemed a little outside of my comfort zone. To be honest, I requested a review copy of The Glass Hotel because I loved Station Eleven. My TL:DR Five Word Review : Could not put it down
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