The graffiti would appear to be intended for Jonathan Alkaitis, a wealthy investor who owns the hotel. Paul is immediately suspected and soon fired. Graffiti is discovered written on a window in the lobby with an acid marker, saying, 'Why don't you swallow broken glass'. Paul flees to the apartment of his half-sister Vincent.įive years later, Paul and Vincent work at a hotel on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island in the fictional Caiette, which is based on the real hamlet Quatsino.

At a nightclub, he gives some tablets to some people he is hoping to befriend and one of them dies shortly after.

Paul is a lonely student at the University of Toronto. It follows the aftermath of a disturbing graffiti incident at a hotel on Vancouver Island and the collapse of an international Ponzi scheme. It is Mandel's fifth novel, and the first since winning the Arthur C. (Mar.The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Canadian writer Emily St. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown, Ltd. This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness. Using flashbacks, flash-forwards, alternating points-of-view, and alternate realities, Mandel shows the siblings moving in and out of each other’s lives, different worlds, and versions of themselves, sometimes closer, sometimes further apart, like a double helix, never quite linking. The videos have helped Paul, despite a lifelong drug problem, tap into his creative gifts. Paul, meanwhile, has set Vincent’s old videos to music. Finished with Jonathan and the affluent lifestyle and ignored by her best friend, Vincent takes a job as assistant cook on a container ship. When Jonathan’s Ponzi scheme collapses, he goes to prison, where his victims’ ghosts visit him. Vincent relocates to the East Coast and what Mandel calls the kingdom of money to play trophy wife for investor Jonathan Alkaitis. Paul leaves after writing on a window in acid marker a message even he doesn’t understand. Five years later, in the wilderness north of Vancouver, Vincent tends bar at a luxury hotel where Paul works as the night houseman. Vincent has just lost her mother and acquired her first video camera.

In 1994, 18-year-old drug-using dropout Paul Smith visits his 13-year-old half-sister, Vincent, in Vancouver. Settings include British Columbia’s coastal wilderness, New York City’s fashionable neighborhoods and corporate headquarters, a container ship in international waters, and a South Carolina prison.

Mandel’s wonderful novel (after Station Eleven) follows a brother and sister as they navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt.

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