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Emily St John Mandel: 'I admire novelists who are pushing the form forward'

Emily St John Mandel is a Canadian novelist now residing in New York. Her fourth novel, the dystopian fiction of Station Eleven, propelled her to fame in 2014. It was a bestseller in both the UK and the US, winning the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction, and nominations for the National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner award. Her new novel is The Glass Hotel.

The Glass Hotel centres on the 2008 financial crash. Why was that a period you wanted to explore?
It’s a period in recent history that I remember so vividly. It was such an unsettling, chaotic time. In particular, I was fascinated by the Bernie Madoff story. The Glass Hotel is not about Bernie Madoff or his staff, his family or his investors. But it is the same crime in the novel. Madoff almost seemed like the embodiment of that era. There was such popular rage directed against him because we thought our economies were solid and it turned out to be something of a house of cards. And here was this fabulously wealthy conman who’d been gambling with retirement savings.

It’s not Madoff’s story but your protagonist, Jonathan Alkaitis, is a very similar character. What is it about that personality type that interested you?
The compartmentalisation. We all compartmentalise to some extent: you’re a different person at work than you are at home, a different person with your family than with acquaintances. But to be able to split your life in that way: to devote your professional energies to running a massive fraud and at the same time be a husband and a friend and a father. There’s something fascinating in that to me.

The life of Jonathan’s fake trophy wife inside “the kingdom of money” is vacuous and unfulfilling. Was that your starting point?
It was partly a desire to write about money as its own country. I think if you live with an enormous amount of money, that puts you in a very different world, with its own customs and mores. You see it most vividly at the airport: there are first-class lounges, and a first-class section on the plane. But at different levels of money, they’re no longer on the same plane. They’re in their private jets.

I'd always wanted to write a ghost story. It's a genre that I love

Ghostliness and hauntings permeate the novel. Would you describe it as a ghost story?
Absolutely. It’s funny – I set out to write a book that was quite narrowly focused on the collapse and aftermath of a massive Ponzi scheme but by the end I’d written a ghost story wherein a Ponzi scheme was just one element. The truth is that I’d always wanted to write a ghost story. It’s a form that I love.

Reinvention and transformation are strong themes. It seems that for some characters it’s a strength, but for others a way to avoid reality and their own demons.
Yes, I think that generally speaking a capacity for reinvention is wonderful. Often that can take the form of resilience when someone’s life is not going particularly well. To have the courage to do something completely different: I think that’s usually admirable. But sometimes that can just be an escape hatch.

Your previous novel, Station Eleven, featured a global pandemic – Georgia Flu. In light of the coronavirus, does the novel now seem worryingly prescient?
It doesn’t, but only because I read so much about pandemics when I was writing it. This is not to make light of pandemics at all – it’s a terrible situation – but this is just something that happens from time to time in human history. There have been pandemics before and there will be again. I think the unfortunate reality is that every few years Station Eleven will seem horribly relevant.

What’s your favourite dystopian novel?
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller. It’s an old novel – it came out in 1960 – and it’s about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. It’s a very sharp, beautifully written work. It’s somewhat haunting and I read it when I was 15 years old and it’s stayed with me in a very vivid way.

What about your favourite ghost story?
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. I just thought it was wonderful. The creepiness and ambiguity of it was stunning.

Which writers have most influenced your own writing?
Raymond Chandler has definitely been an influence. Also Irène Némirovsky – her most famous novel is Suite Francaise, which was not finished when she was arrested by the Nazis and died at Auschwitz. But even as an incomplete novel it’s a masterpiece of lucidity and clarity, and I’m always writing towards that prose style. And also an American novelist named Dan Chaon: he does really interesting things with structure and genre that I admire.

Which novelists working today do you admire most?
Those who are doing really interesting things with the form – pushing it forward in some way. So Ali Smith is one of my very favourites. And on this side of the Atlantic I would also say Jennifer Egan: her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad was hugely influential for me in the boldness of its structure.

What kind of reader were you as a child?
I was a voracious reader. My family never had much money but we did have an incredible number of books so I just read my way through my parents’ book collection. I’m sure it was often quite inappropriate but I read everything.

Which books and authors have stayed with you since childhood?
Susan Cooper’s series The Dark Is Rising. Nobody in the US has ever heard of her but I thought she was wonderful. Also The Chronicles of Narnia and the Tolkien books – the Lord of the Rings cycle.

What’s the last really great book you read?
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – it’s a masterpiece.

What’s on your bedside table to read next?
Ronan Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill – I’m looking forward to that very much.

Which literary figures – dead or alive – would you most like to meet?
I would love to meet Alice Munro. She was friends with my grandmother years and years ago. My grandmother’s been dead for 25 years but she used to talk about Alice. I’d love to meet Munro to talk about her work, which I love, but also to ask if she remembered my grandmother.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel is published by Pan Macmillan in ebook and audio formats on 30 April and in hardback on 6 August (£14.99)