Book Review: The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

Like Station Eleven, this book drifts and settles on characters and across years (and places), building and rebuilding a narrative.
At its heart, I think it dwells on this question: How readily will a person cross the line of morality to save himself? Is that line the same for each of us, or does it shift? What burden do we bear for others in making those choices, and how likely then is it that the ghosts of our poor choices will haunt us?
At the center of the characters are a brother and sister, Paul and Vincent, who share a father but have different mothers. They are five years apart and emotionally distant, practically strangers. Paul has grown up with his mother, visiting his father only once a year or so where he lives with Vincent and her mother on a remote island in British Columbia.
As the (primary setting of) the story begins, Vincent's mother has disappeared from her canoe, presumably drowned. This uncertain disappearance casts an early spell. Much of the rest of the book is misted in a similar uncertainty, as both Vincent and Paul make desperate choices to survive--each finding a type of security and even success--but at cost.
Vincent enters a relationship with the ridiculously wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis, who is old enough to be her father. His wealth buys her serenity--of sorts--and she blinds herself to her whispering doubts about the source of his success until it is revealed that he has swindled all of his investors in a decades-long Ponzi scheme. This scheme, when it is uncovered, causes repercussions that stretch long filaments out to touch most of the other characters.
Like Station Eleven, the book caught and held my attention immediately and consistently. The writing is tense and spare, lovely and evocative. The characters are multi-faceted and unpredictable in the best of ways. The movement of the narrative arc between times and places and characters is a little disorienting at first, though. (Confession: I had to sketch out a timeline about forty pages in to keep things straight, but then I found my bearings.)
I guess my only complaint is that much of the narrative centers on Alkaitis, who seems pretty despicable to me. (Actually, now that I think of it, in Station Eleven, much of the narrative focuses on Arthur Leander, whom I also rather dislike.) (Hmm. Why, Emily?) I wanted to read more about Vincent, who was my favorite character. But still, a finely plotted book with lovely characters and themes I will ponder for many days to come. Also: British Columbia (where Vincent grew up and where the Glass Hotel is). I think I need to go there.