Royal Botanical Gardens, image by Kew.org
I’ve been reading. I’ve been reading A LOT. One of the best things I’ve read in the past few months is The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.
The story begins in a glass hotel, a fantastical building on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island, somewhere between the forest and the sea. To reach the hotel, one must take a boat to the island. Vincent, a young woman who was raised just across the water, has come back home to work as a bartender in the hotel and found a position for her half-brother Paul as the night shift custodian. Late one night, when the owner of the hotel is expected, Vincent looks up and sees an image scrawled across the outside surface of the lobby wall, the glass etched with an acid pen. “Why don’t you eat broken glass?”
But I have not begun at the beginning. Here is how the novel begins.
VINCENT IN THE OCEAN
December 2018
1
Begin at the end: plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s wild darkness, breath gone with the shock of falling, my camera flying away through the rain—
2
Sweep me up. Words scrawled on a window when I was thirteen years old. I stepped back and let the marker drop from my hand and still I remember the exuberance of that moment, that feeling in my chest like light glinting on crushed glass—
3
Have I risen to the surface? The cold is annihilating, the cold is all there is—
4
A strange memory: standing by the shore at Caiette when I was thirteen years old, my brand-new video camera cool and strange in my hands, filming the waves in five-minute intervals, and as I’m filming I hear my own voice whispering, “I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home,” although where is home if not there?
5
Where am I? Neither in nor out of the ocean, I can’t feel the cold anymore or actually anything, I am aware of a border but I can’t tell which side I’m on, and it seems I can move between memories like walking from one room to the next—
6
“Welcome aboard,” the third mate said the first time I ever boarded the Neptune Cumberland. When I looked at him something struck me, and I thought, You—
7
I am out of time—
8
I want to see my brother. I can hear him talking to me, and my memories of him are agitating. I concentrate very hard and abruptly I’m standing on a narrow street, in the dark, in the rain, in a foreign city. A man is slumped in a doorway just across from me, and I haven’t seen my brother in a decade but I know that it’s him. Paul looks up and there’s time to notice that he looks terrible, gaunt and undone, he sees me but then the street blinks out—
Within those mysterious eight paragraphs lies the beginning of the novel and the end. I felt as if, throughout, I were reading a mirage.
On the night of the hotel message, the hotel owner Jonathan Alkaitis arrives. He is a money manager, a multimillionaire — perhaps billionaire — the founder and head of an Wall Street investment firm that manages accounts. He enlists another investor, a guest of the hotel, and proposes to Vincent that she accompany him when he departs.
Flashing between the past and the present, St. John Mandel takes the crushed glass of the message and fragments her story accordingly. There are shades of Bernie Madoff, Y2K, grunge music, art theory. Paul attends a concert. Vincent runs away from home. Vincent’s mother disappears. Alkaitis establishes a Ponzi scheme. Vincent films snippets in precisely five minute segments. Paul sets the films to a score. Vincent attends Paul’s concert. Alkaitis introduces Vincent to the “kingdom of money”.
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of Station Eleven, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner award. (See a review here: https://daeandwrite.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/flu-season-station-eleven-by-emily-st-john-mandel/).
This, her fifth novel, is haunting. Maureen Corrigan, speaking on NPR’s Fresh Air, said, “it’s ‘straight’ literary fiction, gorgeous and haunting, about the porous boundaries between past and present, the rich and the poor, and the realms of the living and the dead…” It is about messages, tangible words and the looks that pass between us. It’s about art and ownership and loss and the conjoining of the three and the effect each has on us, together and apart.
The writing is so beautiful, I really hesitate to say much more. There is so much to consume here, to digest. I read it once and then again, just to touch the words and worlds once more. In the end, the fragments of story return to the whole and the shattered glass is once more smooth. So smooth one wonders if it ever really broke at all.
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Vincent’s talent at mixing cocktails is mentioned frequently. In one scene, three specific cocktails are mentioned: Midnight in Saigon, Cosmopolitan, and a Sunday Morning served with bar snacks of pretzels and salted nuts.
I couldn’t find any recipes for a Midnight in Saigon or a Sunday Morning, but here’s Liquor.com’s “best” cosmo:
- 1 1/2 oz Citrus vodka
- 1 oz Cointreau
- 1/2 oz Fresh lime juice
- 1 dash Cranberry juice
- Garnish: Lime wheel
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Add all ingredients into a shaker with ice and shake.
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Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
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Garnish with a lime wheel.
There’s lots of wine. Lots of coffee. Vincent goes out for breakfast every day. The company’s Christmas party has a chocolate fondue station.
Apparently, Vancouver itself offers great fresh seafood and claims to have invented the California roll. The Canadian specialty poutine is popular but the most intriguing food I’ve found is candied salmon and I would give that a try for my book club.
This recipe for Candied Salmon is from barbecuebible.com, for it you will need a smoker:
- 1 piece (1½ pounds) fresh skinless salmon fillet (preferably a center cut)
- 1 cup dark brown sugar or maple sugar
- ¼ cup coarse salt (sea or kosher)
- ¾ cup pure maple syrup (preferably dark amber or Grade B)
- 1 quart water
- Vegetable oil, for oiling the rack
Step 1: Rinse the salmon under cold running water and blot dry with paper towels. Run your fingers over the flesh side of the fillet, feeling for the sharp ends of pin bones. Pull out any you find with kitchen tweezers.
Step 2: Using a sharp knife, slice the salmon widthwise into strips 1 inch wide and 4 to 5 inches long. Transfer the fish to a large heavy-duty resealable plastic bag and place the bag in an aluminum foil pan or baking dish to contain any leaks.
Step 3: Combine the brown sugar, salt, and ½ cup of the maple syrup in a bowl. Add the water and stir until the sugar and salt dissolve. Pour this over the salmon and seal the bag. Cure in the refrigerator for 8 hours, turning the bag over several times to redistribute the brine.
Step 4: Drain the salmon in a colander, discarding the brine, and rinse the salmon well under cold running water. Blot dry with paper towels. Arrange the salmon flesh side up on an oiled wire rack over a rimmed baking sheet and let air-dry in the refrigerator until tacky, 2 hours.
Step 5: Set up your smoker following the manufacturer’s instructions and preheat to 225° to 250°F. Add the wood as directed by the manufacturer.
Step 6: Place the salmon on its rack in the smoker and smoke until the outside is bronzed with smoke and the salmon feels firm, 30 to 60 minutes. Start brushing the salmon with the remaining ¼ cup of maple syrup after 15 minutes, and brush several times until it’s cooked (about 140°F on an instant-read thermometer). Transfer the salmon candy on its rack to a rimmed baking sheet to cool and brush one final time with maple syrup before serving. Serve at room temperature or cold.
Step 7: In the unlikely event you have leftovers, store the salmon candy in a resealable plastic bag in the refrigerator; it will keep for at least 3 days.
MUSIC
Paul, Vincent’s brother, claims to be a composer. He is introduced wearing a Radiohead t-shirt. If you like that angle, you can stream a Radiohead Youtube channel all night.
Or put together a playlist:
Broken Glass, Rachel Platten .https://youtu.be/b2390GAm4d0
Heart of Glass, Blondie
Walking on Broken Glass, Annie Lennox
Raise Your Glass, Pink https://youtu.be/XjVNlG5cZyQ
Shattered Glass, Brad Paisley
Glass House, Ani DeFranco
Life in A Glasshouse, Radiohead
Glass of Water, Coldplay
MOVIE
I can totally see Alex Baldwin at Jonathan Alkaitis.
Also, Aaron Paul as Paul is an easy fit.
Although there are many, many other characters, Vincent is the primary character and the hardest for me to capture. She’s described as entering an office party and making every other spouse automatically less attractive. Alkaitis tells her she makes everything look effortless. She swims nightly and runs each money, so she’s fit. She’s described as having long, dark hair that she wears loose around her shoulders.
Nina Dobrev is a Canadian actress, 31 years old with long dark hair. Anybody think Meghan Markle would be interested?
Happy Reading!
I had the pleasure of talking on Artist First Radio with author Doug Dahlgren. It was a fun hour talking about writing, books, inspiration and 
Published in 2016, this book came to my notice as a recommendation for those who love the book 
Margaret Atwood’s answer to the readers who clamored for a sequel to T
Finally, a reminder that my debut novel, 
Our book club of 22 years met last night for the first time on an online forum. Eight women, long-time friends, who had not been out in society for about five weeks. You can imagine the explosion of conversation! The book of the month, Heartburn by Nora Ephron, got some minor attention before we launched into an animated discussion of the virus, our work, our children, what we’ve been watching on television, when this all might end. I tried to lead a rousing chorus of the theme song for The Brady Bunch but was dissuaded.
When our book club meets, we have a custom of planning a menu derived from the book under discussion. Heartburn would’ve been the perfect book for this as author Ephron filled Heartburn not only with her heartbreak over her marriage falling apart, but the recipes that accompanied those events. Pasta alla cecio, key lime pie, bread pudding, arugula salad, the world’s most perfect vinaigrette. I had the menu planned before I even finished reading the book.
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For the pie, Indiana is famous for Sugar Cream Pie, also known as Hoosier Pie, the unofficial pie of the state. Here’s a great recipe from Saveur: 
The Alt Family Thanksgiving
As I write this on March 27, 2020, the world is in the midst of a pandemic. The novel virus Covid-19 has to date, affected 584,110 people worldwide and caused 26,862 deaths. In my state of Kentucky, we are being asked to stay #HealthyatHome and restrict our socializing to on-line.
A Gentleman In Moscow. This treasure is number one on my list of quarantine reads. Count Rostov, the protagonist of Amor Towles’ fantastic novel, is himself quarantined, committed to the interior of the Hotel Metropol by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. There are worlds within the Count’s world, and he finds them with the help of a precocious young lady named Nina who has somehow procured a pass key to all the rooms of the Metropol and uses it to great effect. But the Count finds not only the Metropol’s wine vault, silver room, and lost and found, he also finds love, friendship, and a life far fuller than one would imagine could be found within the confines of one hotel, however luxurious, for more than thirty years.
wars to ravage the countryside and population of an unknown Central American nation, a doctor, his wife and the man who has loved her for decades spend their days involved in their own lives. Sheltered from the country’s wars by wealth. Suffused with longing. Having an astounding amount of sex. Love in the TIme of Cholera, published in 1985 by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is at times a study of frustration, devotion, persistence, ambition, betrayal, forgiveness, obsession. It is a novel of life and yet the author warned readers of Love, “not to fall into my trap.” He also told the New Yorker that the book is based on the love story of his own parents.
his mother, Ma. He has games and toys; a television that he believes is a direct connection depicting reality on another planet; a wardrobe where he sleeps when “Old Nick” comes to make fearsome noises with Jake’s mother. When Jake and Ma are rescued due to Ma’s ingenuity in faking Jake’s death, Jake leaves the only world he has ever known and Ma return to the world she left more than seven years ago. The departure is violent, disturbing, upheaval in lives previously confined to four walls and eleven by eleven foot space.
Year of Wonders. It is 1666 and a bolt of cloth infested with the black plague is shipped from London to a small Derbyshire village. Geraldine Brooks’ best-selling novel from 2002 follows a housemaid named Anna Frith who becomes a healer and a hero. Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a best-selling novel by the highly-acclaimed, 2006 Pulitzer-prize winning novelist and a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.
companionship as the aviator at its center lands in the middle of a desert and must survive alone for a time. But I think of the novella as a contemplation of friendship between a fox, a prince, and other lonely souls who gather. It may be considered a children’s book but it is a profound work written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry after his experiences as a pilot in World War II.
Wide Sargasso Sea. The lives of one of literature’s most famous shut-in is reimagined in Wide Sargasso Sea. Jean Rhys’ magnificent, sensual, masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea, Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre is no romantic hero. Rhys contemplates how Mr. Rochester may have obtained the wife who so infamously dashes the chaste Jane’s dreams of marriage by her nightmarish presence in the Rochester attic, placing him in Spanish Town, Jamaica to receive a bride and 30,000 pounds in dowry with no provision made for his bride: Antoinette, the beautiful, mulatto daughter of a deceased mad woman.
committed introvert. Since she moved into her solo apartment nearly a decade ago, Eleanor has had few guests. A total of two in fact. The meter reader and a social worker who checks on her about once a month. That is fine with Eleanor as well . . . until the night she encounters rock star-wannabe Johnnie Lomond who immediately impresses her as the type of man her mother would find acceptable because he buttons the lower button of his vest while performing in a local music venue. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is a debut novel by a post-40 year old author. Gail Honeyman worked in the British Civil Service and as a university administrator writing her debut novel during lunch and after work. She entered Eleanor in a fiction competition, didn’t win, but an agent signed her and the novel became the subject of a bidding war, was named 2017 Book of the Year at the British Book Awards, and the film rights have been optioned by Reese Witherspoon. Talk about a Cinderella story.
Finally: this novel has nothing to do at all with isolation! My debut novel, After the Race is now available. Alexandra was raised to be the next Jackie Kennedy. Just as her mother intended, Alexandra’s summer internship on Capitol Hill results in the perfect fiancé, a future job, and D.C. political savvy. But when Alex returns to college for her final year and falls in love with a handsome, blue-jeaned bike champion, she must choose between the two men and the lives they represent, and decide whether she can defy her mother’s designs to fulfill her own dreams. Ultimately, Alexandra must find within herself the power to confront the one unplanned event that could derail everything. After the Race is available from rabbithousepress.com, amazon.com and at Joseph-Beth booksellers.
And don’t forget that my debut novel, After the Race, is available now! You can order from rabbithousepress.com or Amazon, or buy it from Joseph-Beth booksellers. If your local book store doesn’t have it in stock, ask them to carry After the Race!
wonder Ms. Strout has returned to Olive and Crosby in Olive, Again. Ten years ago, Strout won a Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge and that book was turned into a mini-series starring Frances McDermond which is definitely worth the watch.
Over the course of the book, Olive’s somewhat-estranged son Christoper visits; she sympathetically watches over a friend in a nursing home; Olive and Jack marry. Olive’s trademark exclamations — “Oh Godfrey,” “phooey to you,” “she’s gone all dopey-dope,” — as well as her defensiveness and vulnerability remain intact.
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*** My novel, After the Race, is now available! Alexandra was raised to be the next Jackie Kennedy. Just as her mother intended, Alexandra’s summer internship on Capitol Hill results in the perfect fiancé, a future job, and D.C. political savvy. But when Alex returns to college for her final year and falls in love with a handsome, blue-jeaned bike champion, she must choose between the two men and the lives they represent, and decide whether she can defy her mother’s designs to fulfill her own dreams. Ultimately, Alexandra must find within herself the power to confront the one unplanned event that could derail everything.
Slathering her upturned nose with zinc oxide, Meg Swenson turned from her own makeup mirror. “Don’t forget sunscreen,” Meg said. She pulled a blue and white Gamma Chi Omega sorority visor over her short, dark hair to screen her fair skin.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She sang, “Every fart you fake… “
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