The Glass Hotel

 The Glass Hotel

By Emily St. John Mandel

Another one of Anthony Jeselnik's book club picks. I am glad I picked it up.

The story ostensibly focuses on a brother and a sister: Paul and Vincent. At the outset, Paul is an addict and Vincent is a young women whose life has been sent off the rails a bit after the death of her mother in a small island town in British Colombia. 

After years apart, they find themselves working at the same hotel on their home island when a strange incident occurs. Someone has used an acid marker -- I do not know what this is -- to etch the words "Why don't you eat broken glass?" into one of the hotel's windows. It is a strange, unsettling message, one that stirs the managers of the hotel, which is for 1%ers, into a frenzy. Paul is blamed. He puts up no fight, but we, the reader, still don't quite know the truth about the incident until much later in the book.

Meanwhile, Vincent also soon leaves the hotel. But she leaves not in disgrace but on the arms of its owner, the Uber wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis. There is something shady about Alkaitis, but Vincent nevertheless dives into the world of money. She revels for a few years until that shadow comes out of hiding. Alkaitis was, as was a bit obvious to the reader, running a Ponzi scheme and had been for decades. It was only during a financial downturn, which caused some investors to pull their money, that it became untenable. 

Lives are, of course, ruined. In prison, Alkaitis begins to see the ghosts of his former investors, often on the day that they die. Vincent, meanwhile, takes to the sea and becomes a cook. Until one night, she disappears in stormy weather. Was her penchant for videoing 5-minute snippets of film to blame? Or was she pushed by an angry lover? We never really find out. 

The book was nothing short of mesmerizing, and I didn't do it justice here. I initially thought that the Alkaitis character, who pretty clearly resembled Bernie Madoff, would be a bit part, and was surprised when he became a central character. But I guess that's probably how his investors felt, too. He came from nowhere and soon became a key fixture in their lives, and remained so even after the money was gone. I so enjoyed this book that I picked up another one by Mandel called Station Eleven, which is better known. So far so good.

Crossroads

 Crossroads

By Jonathan Franzen

This one sat on my shelf for several years. Dad gave it to me one year for Valentine's Day and, knowing
what I know about Franzen, I just couldn't bring myself to pick it up. For some reason, I decided to dig in this September.

Why is it called Crossroads? Because every character is at, wait for it, a crossroads in their life. Add to that fact that the patriarch of the family, Russ, is an associate minister at a Chicago-area church, and you get another layer. And then there is the fact that the youth program at the church is called, wait for it again, crossroads. It's a bit heavy handed.

I am writing this about three weeks after finishing the book, and I really don't feel like going into too much detail. How could I? The book is almost 600 pages! It alternates points of view. We hear from Russ, his drug-dealing son, his wife, another son, and a daughter. They're all pretty messed up. My favorite is the eldest son, whose name I don't recall at the moment. He's so self-righteous that he gives up his student deferment by dropping out of college and notifying the draft board of his decision. Thing is, the war is over. There isn't a draft anymore. And so the gesture, meant to be a kind of fuck-you to his father, who he deems irredeemable hypocrite, is, essentially, meaningless.

So it goes with the rest of them.

Russ' wife is perhaps the least believable characters. She was the daughter of privilege until the stock market crash in the 20s, which prompted her manic-depressive father to suicide. Farmed out to her uncle for raising, she, too, develops a mental illness. It manifests as an obsession with a married man, which leads to a need for an abortion, the need for which results in a stint of prostitution, which is followed by an institutionalization. She keeps it all secret, though, for some 30 years. Which seems a bit far-fetched.

The premise of the book and it's plot, I must say, are a bit ridiculous and unbelievable. And yet I made it almost 600 pages. How? There is something mesmerizing about Franzen's writing and his ability to get you inside the head of his characters that keeps you reading. I didn't love the book. But I certainly don't regret reading it.