Book 20 - I'd Like to at Least Visit the Island

Title: The Glass Hotel

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

Genre: serene fiction

If someone were to ask me what this book is about, I have no idea what I would tell them. There are themes for sure - drug use, ghosts, alternate realities, memory, wealth as an island...

And yet.

Even after a week or so of having finished the book, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell it's trying to say, or tell me.

When I think of other stories like this, with multiple POVs that cross in one way or another, they tend to come together with a bang of some kind. All the pieces fit into each other by the end, and the reader closes the book with a sense of accomplishment. I did it. I solved it.

This book, though, is more akin to a spiderweb. Connections exist and they may be meaningful - but they may also just be that. Degrees of separation that are nothing more than happenstance. Things connect, and sometimes that's just it.

Overall, St. John Mandel is a gorgeous writer. There is something so serene about the things she writes, and in this book her prose is the perfect guide to the time- and POV-jumping weave of the story's net.

Rating: 🍓🍓🍓