The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

 

This book feels like one of them literary books where things happen in whatever order the author chooses to tell you about them, until the author decides to stop telling you about them; where there's not one big thing that happens, where the climax might not happen, or where it might be some quiet moment, some subtle decision; the sort of book where there's not really a hero and plausibly not even really a protagonist, just some people whose points of view the author establishes. Ms. Mandel writes smoothly and well, but this novel ends up feeling as though there's not enough substance to support its weight--and at less than three hundred pages, it don't weigh much.