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BOOKSThe Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its char-
acters continually on the run. Still, the harder they
try to escape their histories, the more persistently they
are pulled back, often by visions of the people they’ve
wronged. These ghosts are not emissaries come to
do malice or wreak vengeance, as we usually imagine
them to be; they are physical manifestations of guilty
consciences. (Station Eleven dealt almost humorously
with the idea of a spirit world: “Are you asking if I
believe in ghosts?” one character says. “Of course not.
Imagine how many there’d be” is the response.) They
are also an anchor to the past, however unwanted that
may be, especially for those who have left behind a
life they would be happier forgetting.
Oskar, Alkaitis’s employee, calls his own fantasies
of how things might have gone differently a “ghost
version” of his life. Alkaitis calls his alternative ver-
sion a “counterlife,” which Mandel also uses as a title
for the latter parts of his story. It’s an explicit refer-
ence to Philip Roth’s novel of the same title, in which
multiple characters experience different versions of
their own lives, some of which are chronicled in amanuscript-within-the-book. Among other things,
the device functions to poke fun at some readers’
assumptions that Roth’s books are autobiographical—
an alternative version of his own life.
Mandel’s purpose, as I understand it, is different.
“We move through this world so lightly,” Leon’s wife
says at one point, a remark that could refer both to
how unencumbered the two of them are (few posses-
sions, no family) and to the human condition more
generally, each individual life ever able to alter its orbit
in an unpredictable direction. If anything can happen
in life, if anything is possible, then the novel form—
which takes those possibilities and multiplies them on
a metaphysical scale—becomes the ultimate way to
express those variations. That’s precisely why Mandel
has brought back characters from her previous novel
and spun them in a new direction: to demonstrate
the infinite possibilities available to a writer of fiction.
(David Mitchell is another contemporary novelist who
has used this technique to similar effect.)
The structure of The Glass Hotel is virtuosic, as the
fragments of the story coalesce by the end of the nar-
rative into a richly satisfying shape. There are wonder-
ful moments of lyricism, such as the monologue by
Vincent that both opens and closes the novel, and
another section titled “The Office Chorus,” narrated
by a group of Alkaitis’s employees—an especially bril-
liant touch. But for the most part Mandel’s language is
understated, fading almost invisibly to serve the famil-
iar pleasures of character and plot. Despite the initial
disorientation of its kaleidoscopic form, The Glass
Hotel is ultimately as immersive a reading experience
as its predecessor, finding all the necessary imaginative
depth within the more realistic confines of its world.
In the first scene of Station Eleven, an actor playing
King Lear dies onstage during the production, col-
lapsing art into life. As the novel reminds us, many of
Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed against
the backdrop of plague outbreaks, in which he likely
lost members of his own family. One can imagine that
his audiences came to the theater seeking distraction
from their moment of catastrophe as well as insight
into how to understand it. In our own fractured times,
omniscient narrators have come to be viewed with sus-
picion, and an experimental minimalism often seems
to be the only way to describe our lives now. Mandel’s
affirmation that a somewhat old-fashioned fictional
model is not only relevant to our alarming new world
but also deeply appropriate for it manages, remark-
ably, to feel both consoling and revolutionary.Ruth Franklin is the author, most recently, of Shirley
Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.