2022/67: The Glass Hotel -- Emily St John Mandel

2022/67: The Glass Hotel -- Emily St John Mandel

She’d never believed in love at first sight but she did believe in recognition at first sight, she believed in understanding upon meeting someone for the first time that they were going to be important in her life, a sensation like recognizing a familiar face in an old photograph: in a sea of faces that mean nothing, one comes into focus. You. [p. 123]

The eponymous hotel is a glass-and-cedar construction on a remote island in British Columbia. Vincent Smith (female) tends bar; Jonathan Alkaitis, financier, owns the hotel; Vincent's brother Paul works at the hotel. One night, shipping executive Leon Prevant checks in, and is shocked to see a threatening message scrawled in acid on the glass. How these four people relate to one another -- betrayal and theft, love and hatred, ghosts and lies -- is the matter of the novel.( Read more... )