The most obvious St. John Mandel motif in The Glass Hotel was the improbable connections between characters; some of the characters were hapless, but not as intensely so as in her earlier books.
Finished reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. Ostensibly (and, to be fair, mostly) about a financial con, it’s also somehow about ghosts and maybe alternate realities. I think this is my favorite of her books (so far; I still haven’t read Sea of Tranquility).
I’ve now reread the ending of Golden Hill two or three times, which I never do.
Finished reading Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. Set in 1746 New York, it felt Austinesque like the best Aubrey/Maturin stories, though without the nautical adventure. It started out as a fun romp; by the end it became something else, very satisfying but more melancholy. It’s early in the year, but I bet this will be one of my favorite books.
Speaking of reading, I started Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock at the end of the year, but set it aside and am probably not returning to it any time soon. It’s part of a collection of Elric stories in order of fictional chronology, and I think this didn’t do the collection any favors: The first part (“Elric of Melniboné”) was pretty good, but I could not get interested in the next (“The Fortress of the Pearl”). In the third (“The Sailor on the Seas of Fate” — a badass title), Moorcock brings together several protagonists from his other stories, and seems to expect that I have read about and care about those protagonists, and then they smash together and become Voltron or something?, and I just had to put it down. I like the idea of Elric, but could not enjoy these stories.