Glass

British author Alex Christofi’s humorous debut novel, Glass (2015), tells the story of former milkman and aspiring window-cleaner Günter Glass. The reader learns on the first page that twenty-two-year-old Glass is already dead, and thus the rest of the narrative works to flesh out his complicated life. Glass’s story is unusual in that he is an antihero, and his story is being told by a friend, Dean Angela Winterbottom. Given the interesting way the narrative begins, and Glass’s bucking of traditional hero tropes, the narrative convincingly addresses themes of death, struggle, goodness, hope, domestic terrorism, celebrity fixation, and hero worship, among many other things. Christofi won the 2016 Betty Trask Prize for Glass.

The biographical narrative, as told by his friend, Dean Angela Winterbottom, centers on the eccentric, twenty-two-year-old Günter Glass, who has died. From the start, Glass is portrayed as a strange antihero. Ever since he visited a glassblower’s shop as a child, he has been obsessed with glass. Also, he uses the information website Wikipedia to help him better understand the world. When Glass one day finds himself at the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, his love of glass (and heights), in fact, turns his life around. From this oddball event at the Cathedral, he gains celebrity status. However, his happiness is momentarily waylaid when, sometime after his window-cleaning success, his mother dies. This tragedy is then followed by his father slipping into alcoholism. With nothing really holding him to his home, Glass moves to London for a fresh start.



London turns out to be exactly what Glass has been wanting: it’s big, messy, and full of surprises. Instead of solely relying on Wikipedia, he is thrust into lived experience. Glass begins dating a psychic/tarot reader, and he finds a roommate named Steppenwolf (there are various nods to German philosophy throughout the novel, including the names Steppenwolf and Günter Glass). Adding to the oddball feel of the narrative, Steppenwolf (like the character he’s named after) wants to create a manifesto about living the good life. To do so, he keeps himself holed up in his room, surviving off mackerel while he writes.

Glass soon finds a job suited to his passion and talent: he becomes a high-rise window cleaner. His boss, John Blades, is the quintessential bad boss/bad guy in the narrative. His character also becomes a major plot point when the reader learns that, not only is Glass’s now-pregnant girlfriend the ex-girlfriend of Blades, but Blades is a racist with what seems to be (especially to Glass) terrorist leanings. Glass soon becomes convinced that Blades plans to blow up London’s Shard, a 95-story skyscraper covered with glass. The rest of the narrative follows Glass as he navigates romance, friendship, and work while also trying to remain true to the worldly wisdom imparted to him from his late mother.

Glass also includes footnotes that underscore the fact that Angela is writing the narrative. Some critics have found this inclusion tedious, though the footnotes do, in fact, continue the theme of metatext found in the narrative: Steppenwolf’s manifesto, which mirrors the philosophical text that the Steppenwolf he’s named after also wrote; Wikipedia info; and various Biblical passages that Angela includes to explain things. As a critic in The Guardian stated, “Theory and experience, the book and the life are laid side by side.” As such, the use of footnotes, and the nod to metatext throughout, might also be seen in a more favorable light as a struggle—or dichotomy—between book smarts and lived experience.