novel reads like a ghost story at some
moments, a thriller at others, hurtling
unstoppably toward its final revelations.
why you’ll love it: It’s strange to think
of a book set in the mid-aughts as a
period piece, but The Glass Hotel is just
that: a searing snapshot of the world
before, during and immediately after
the 2008 financial crisis. St. John Mandel
skewers the excess of pre-crash Wall
Street, the global economy that propped
it up and the moment it all shattered
(you can see where the glass metaphor
comes in). If the book feels true to life,
that’s because it is: St. John Mandel
moved from Toronto to New York City
in 2002, just before the abundance of
the aughts hit its peak, and witnessed
the inflated lives of the city’s elite. After
her friend got caught in Bernie Madoff ’s
infamous Ponzi scheme, she decided
to write a book about the people who
lost everything during that era—and
those who had nothing to begin with.
who wrote it: St. John Mandel achieved
literary superstardom in 2014 with the
publication of Station Eleven, a post-
apocalyptic satire about a Shakespear-
ean troupe trying to survive in the
years following a swine flu pandemic.
Currently being adapted into a mini-
series for HBO Max, it’s not the only
one of her books coming to a screen
near you: months before publication,
The Glass Hotel was optioned by
NBCUniversal.
PONZI 101
What’s a Ponzi scheme, anyway?
It’s a form of financial fraud in which
criminals promise too-good-to-be-true
returns, but don’t actually invest your
money. Instead, they’ll keep some for
themselves and pay the rest with cash
drawn from a new pool of dupes. A vari-
ation on a pyramid scheme, it’s named
after 1920s con artist Charles Ponzi,
who, over the course of a year, robbed
his clients of millions.
Who are the most notorious schemers?
Police twice arrested 19th century Bos-
tonian Sarah Howe, who predates Ponzi
by four decades, for running a fake
investment bank and stealing $500,000,
primarily from unmarried women. More
than a century later, in the 1990s, the
Russian office equipment company
MMM bilked millions of investors of
$1.5 billion—at the time, one of the
largest-ever Ponzi schemes.
Whatever happened to Bernie Madoff?
American financier Madoff now holds the
record for the biggest known scheme,
having stolen $20 billion from investors as
of 2008. His victims included many char-
ities, plus celebs such as John Malkovich,
Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Zsa Zsa
Gabor. He’s currently serving a sentence
of 150 years, but was hospitalized in late
2019 for chronic kidney failure.JOIN THE CONVERSATION
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