{"id":4487,"date":"2025-11-26T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4487"},"modified":"2025-09-15T20:41:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:41:38","slug":"book-the-glass-hotel-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/book-the-glass-hotel-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Glass Hotel (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe Glass Hotel
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2020
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Length: 628 minutes \/ 10.47 hours<\/p>\n

After having read Sea of Tranquility<\/em><\/a> and loving the non-linear storytelling in that book, I picked up one of the author\u2019s previous works, The Glass Hotel<\/em>. While not nearly as fantastical as the time travel infused Sea of Tranquility<\/em>, there\u2019s a lot of personality in the characters in The Glass Hotel<\/em>. These people and events feel real. Even if their circumstances are fictional, albeit based on real-life events, the interconnection of these individuals makes the world feel small\u2014as if dwarfed by the enormous invisible mechanisms that keep the world running on autopilot.<\/p>\n

The one thing with The Glass Hotel<\/em>\u2019s fractured storytelling is that it takes quite a while to figure out what\u2019s going on. Of course, once things click into place, it feels like the setting shrinks down to be exclusively about the eponymous hotel. And then, that\u2019s it. There\u2019s no bigger mystery. There\u2019s no supernatural explanation. Tragedy happens in quiet moments before those who remain have to clean up the broken pieces\u2014whether of their lives or the lives of others who are no longer around. It may present a cynical and hopeless view of our world, but you figure any book written in 2020 would have this perspective.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing I took away from The Glass Hotel<\/em>, it\u2019s that life can lead us in interesting directions if we jump in and let it. Given the opportunity to live a life of luxury, how many of us would balk at it, wondering if it\u2019s too good to be true. But by the same token, we have the ability to just disappear into the vast shipping lanes of global commerce whenever we want. We are all given different choices that can dictate our life\u2019s path, but even these choices aren\u2019t permanent.<\/p>\n

An equally pessimistic and hopeful story told in fractured parts, I give The Glass Hotel<\/i>\u00a04.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Glass HotelYear: 2020Author: Emily St. John MandelLength: 628 minutes \/ 10.47 hours After having read Sea of Tranquility and loving the non-linear storytelling in that book, I picked up one of the author\u2019s previous works, The Glass Hotel. While not nearly as fantastical as the time travel infused Sea of Tranquility, there\u2019s a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[2282,55,4303,4304,4308,4306,4305,4307,8,4302,3081],"class_list":["post-4487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-2282","tag-book","tag-emiliy-st-john-mandel","tag-fractured-storylines","tag-hopeful","tag-interconnected","tag-non-linear","tag-pessimistic","tag-review","tag-the-glass-hotel","tag-thoughtful"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4494,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions\/4494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}