“THE GLASS HOTEL”

By Emily St. John Mandel

Knopf ($26.95)

If “Station 11,” Emily St. John Mandel’s popular 2014 novel about life after the contagion of a deadly flu is topical, her newest novel “The Glass Hotel” may be a better prescription for those seeking respite from pandemic concerns.

Hotel Caitte, situated on an isolated island off the northern tip of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, represents a place for the novel’s characters to transcend the constraints of their present lives. With a backdrop of dense green forest and a lobby “exposed like an aquarium behind a wall of glass, all cedar pillars and slate floors and a double row of lights illuminating that path to the pier,” it feels like a place existing outside of time and space. Or so it seems to Walter, the night manager content to escape indefinitely from a failed career in Toronto. To Paul, a Toronto transplant haunted by the ghost of his father and on and off addictions, his short gig as the hotel’s doorman (a gig secured by his half-sister Vincent) leads to his participation in a disturbing incident at the hotel. Lucky for him, it establishes a connection that leads to his desired career as a composer.

As with many contemporary novels, the narrative follows a nonlinear path. Early characters fade far (too far?) into the background, and the past and present lives of newly introduced characters fill the frame. Vincent, Paul’s half-sister, steps out of her rocky adolescence and into the novel’s spotlight as a confident young bartender, adept at fitting in. Her work at the hotel launches her into a new life when she captures the heart of Jonathan Alkaitis, the New York financier visiting Hotel Caitte — a property he also happens to own. For Alkaitis, the remote hotel floating in the wilderness separates him from his life as a Wall Street financier.

Night manager Walter recalls Alkaitis “carrying himself with the tedious confidence of alll people with money, that breezy assumption that no serious harm could come to him.” The novel contrasts Alkaitis with those working service jobs, plagued with towering college loans. Then there is Vincent, who finds an escape from subsistence living, although she soon sees its flaws, observing that she always associated wealth with privacy — “the wealthiest guests have the most space round them, suites instead of rooms … yet the deeper you go into the kingdom of money the more crowded it gets, people in your home all the time …”

Vincent effortlessly reinvents herself when invited by Alkaitis to share his Greenwich, Conn., home and fill the void left by his deceased wife. She knows she’s playing a role, but she has her diversions — wandering through New York City, meeting her friend Mirella, shooting artistic clips of water in its various states, and swimming in the home’s never-used infinity pool — an activity she describes as “adversarial.” She says she swims every night because she is “desperately afraid of drowning.”

For Alkaitis, it isn’t just Hotel Caitte that is an escape. He reflects on his attraction to places like Dubai where he could “float from beautiful interior to beautiful interior with expert drivers in between.” Hotel life provides him with the compartmentalized state of mind protecting him from the deeper truths of his life.

The novel’s ever-present metaphors of glass and water allure. Yet a certain coldness spills over onto central characters. The pretense of the their shiny, glass-like lives influences our feelings, and it’s hard not to crave greater warmth and character development. Vincent isn’t unlikable, and we don’t blame her for choosing a different life. Neither is Alkaitis intensely unlikable, but the reader hungers for clues providing insight into the workings of their minds.

Mandel’s writing does manage to elicit warmer feelings for the aging Olivia, an artist who is longtime friend of Alkaitis. Years ago, Olivia painted a portrait of Alkaitis’ beloved, deceased brother and it was purchased by the investment adviser. As their friendship grew, Olivia invested her modest life savings with him. During the Vincent era of the friendship, she is invited by the glamorous couple for an evening on the deck of a yacht where she wears a dress that’s “too formal and too-bright.” Vincent observes Olivia is “showing her hand” and wants to advise her not to try too hard, but of course “there is no way to give advice to a woman two or three times your age.”

We wish the novel had more moments like this.

Alkaitis’ investment model proves to be fraudulent on a grand scale and his life rapidly unravels affecting all in his circle — his daughter, Vincent, Olivia and his entire network. He falls far and lands in a place where his luxurious, compartmentalized “hotel life” transforms into a fantasized “counterlife.” Here he encounters the ghost of Olivia and re-envisions moments of his past, even as his sanity frays.

After this major upheaval, Vincent changes her course, pursuing an existence radically counter to that of her life with Alkaitis. What becomes of her and what became of her half-brother Paul? What about Walter the night manager? “The Glass Hotel” circles back to revisit these connections, yet it leaves the reader longing for a richer exploration of their import.

Lisa V. Hancock is a Pennsylvania-based writer and fundraiser.

First Published: April 11, 2020, 2:00 p.m.