The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Named a best book of 2009 by The Economist, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, London Evening Standard, The Observer, and Slate.com. Named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“A stirring new novel that almost won this year’s Booker Prize….The Glass Room works so effectively because Mawer embeds…provocative aesthetic and moral issues in a war-torn adventure story that’s eerily erotic and tremendously exciting….[a] gorgeous novel.”-The Washington Post
“The Glass Room…is a story that will stay with me for a long, long time.”-The Huffington Post
“An old-fashioned, beautifully constructed novel of history, passion and ideas.”-The Seattle Times
“[A] saga of a family and a nation at war…Mawer moves with grace among multiple points of view and establishes sympathy for characters with competing interests.”-The Forward
“[The Glass Room is] a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry… a novel of ideas, yet strongly propelled by plot and characterised by an almost dreamlike simplicity of telling. Comparisons with the work of Michael Frayn would not be misplaced, and there are occasional moments of illuminating brilliance…”-The Guardian
“In Mawer’s hands [The Glass Room] becomes a means for exploring the way people’s hopes for the future become part of their history. This he does beautifully.”-Times Literary Supplement
“… engrossing… Mawer explores his themes with a subtle intelligence. A novel of ideas, but one driven by character and story.”-The Literary Review
“The writing, as sensual and sophisticated as its subjects, keeps us firmly within the house’s elegant parameters, caught up in the touch and taste and roiling emotions of the characters living through these events. Seeing clearly, Mawer shows us, is never an option, no matter how large and expensive your windows. Every era thinks it has achieved transparency, complete with modern fixtures and sundry decorations. But we can’t ever actually see out, because our damned humanity keeps misting up the glass.”-Time Out London
“The Glass Room['s] poetic success is to remind us of two great gilt-edged ironies: that whatever is held to be the height of modernity is already en route to the museum, and that even ‘cold’ art is the embodiment of its maker’s passion - one that can prove contagious.”-The Financial Times
Publisher: Other Press (October 20, 2009) $10.17 Amazon.com
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