The Glass Kingdom, creepy and suspenseful from the start transforms to simple horror by the end, masterfully detailing the resentments that emerge over inequality and the ways that individuals justify stealing from others: “It was a war between herself and the moneyed classes, and in that war all ruses were legitimate, all feints justified,” concludes Sarah soon after creating and selling a set of forgeries, presented as correspondence from her most recent employer, a famous author. Committing a crime eliminates social protections, and when encountering trouble later, Sarah cannot turn to authorities: “It was too late, in any case, to become an upright citizen and call the police.”
A reader
must suspend belief about the plot and numerous character decisions. Why would
the author retain her own handwritten letters to celebrities like Angela Davis
or Diana Vreeland? Why would collectors sell them to the author and not to the other
collectors seeking them and paying a premium price? Wouldn’t the collectors have
direct dealings? And Sarah’s transport of a couple hundred thousand by air, crossing
international borders, would surely be much riskier with more challenges than
described.
Then again,
people are odd, sometimes extraordinarily lucky or unlucky as the case may be. And
loneliness – so familiar during the Covid pandemic – compounds the poor
decision-making displayed throughout the novel: “The burden of that solitude
had begun to crush her hour by hour.” Sarah fails to recognize the assuming manipulations
of a new friend Mali who requires assistance in covering up another crime, not posing questions or objections after Mali suggests: “Let’s do it my way, OK?
I’m sorry to get you involved, though,” quickly adding, “We’d both like that, no?” Finally, why would a young woman not quickly abandon a hotel losing
guests, let alone a city with increasing civil unrest?
The dark and
moody novel powerfully demonstrates how inequality makes trust or mutual respect
impossible. Characters are divided not only by wealth and skill, but ethnicity
and religion. A hotel maid concludes that the farangs, referring to foreigners, are “animals in their hearts, untouched by the grace
of Lord Buddha” – and they exist in a “prison of their own making, and she
entered that prison only to make a living. For in the end there was no other
reason to enter it at all.”
The book conveys that life is unfair at every level. Highly visible, cruel inequality ensures that sinister unfairness and corruption never end.
