From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events--a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
Being in a year of limitations, not able to travel, go to movies, eat out, I have given myself unrestricted book downloads. It is one of my few pleasures. The other pleasure is kitten fostering. I fear that my little babies will go to rescue this next week and can't imagine a home without their antics. These 2 siblings have been a challenge with many health issues, but lots of joy, love, and kittenhood.
Thanks, hermetic, for the weekly thread and for the adorable little facedown kitten in the OP. Edit to add: I know there will be more kittens to foster, soon.