The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel

Publisher : Knopf (2020)

ISBN-13 :978-0525521143

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary

The Glass Hotel (2020) by Emily St. John Mandel is the story of the aftermath and consequences of a long-running Ponzi scheme run by Jonathan Alkaitis. The Glass Hotel is fiction, but it is modeled on the story of Bernie Madoff, who was responsible for one of the largest financial frauds to date – a decades-long Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars. Many think about white collar crime as less harmful than other crimes, but The Glass Hotel portrays financial wrongdoing almost as a pebble thrown into a lake, its ripples growing wider and wider. The financial crimes at the center of The Glass Hotel capture so many people in its wake, and almost no one is left unscathed. There is always a price to pay.

Characters

Vincent Smith/Vincent Alkaitis

Vincent grows up in British Columbia (Canada). She is the product of an affair (an affair that breaks up the marriage of her half-brother Paul’s parents) . Vincent is sent away to live with her aunt at age 13 after her mother goes missing/drowns while canoeing. She has an older half-brother – Paul, and the two are not especially close. While intelligent and observant, Vincent lacks a sense of purpose and direction; she drifts throughout life. When she meets Jonathan while working as a bartender at the 5-star luxury hotel, Hotel Caiette (which he owns), she seizes an opportunity to live a life of ease and wealth. Once Jonathan is convicted and sent to prison, Vincent cannot bear running into his victims, so she leaves New York and takes a job as a chef on a container ship.

Jonathan Alkaitis

Jonathan is a wealthy financier. But he is also a conman, a liar, and a fraud. He pretends to be married to Vincent, in order to seem stable and secure to his investors.  He is self-pitying and selfish, blaming his victims for being greedy. Once convicted, although he feels relief at no longer having to perpetuate his various schemes, he is, nonetheless, haunted by the ghosts of his victims.

Paul Smith

Troubled. A drug-addict, and a music composer. His successful career as a music composer is based upon stolen home video recordings from his half-sister Vincent.

Ella Kapersky

She is the only person who is never fooled by Jonathan or his schemes. She calls the SEC and tries to have them look into Jonathan’s investments, but the investigation goes nowhere. She pays Paul to write the message on the window of the Hotel Caiette, “Why don’t you swallow broken glass?”

Claire

Jonathan’s daughter by his deceased wife, Suzanne. She works in the legitimate part of her father’s business empire. After her discovery of the crime, Claire is the one who calls the FBI about her father. She cuts off all contact with Jonathan. She never visits her father in prison, and refuses to take his calls.

Suzanne Alkaitis

Jonathan’s wife who dies of cancer. Suzanne is fully aware of and complicit in her husband’s financial fraud. She is the one who tells Ella Kapersky: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass?”

The Victims

Leon Prevant, Olivia, Faisal; thousands of others.

Analysis

“We had crossed a line, that much was obvious, but it was difficult to say later exactly where that line had been. Or perhaps we’d all had different lines, or crossed the same line at different times.” (149)

What makes someone cross the line? What do we choose to see and what makes us decide to take action?

Nearly all the characters in The Glass Hotel are corrupt or complicit. There’s obviously Jonathan’s corruption, managing a long-running Ponzi scheme. His employees on the 17th floor who help him manage the fraud are also obviously corrupt.

Then there is Vincent, who is aware of a scheme, if not alert to its details. She chooses not to dig deeper, and be situated in a life of wealth and ease. “He knew, but of course I knew too, if not the details of the scheme than the fact that there was a scheme, because I’d been pretending to be Jonathan’s wife for months by then, it was just that I’d chosen not to understand” (275)

Her brother, Paul, steals his sister’s work and passes it off as his own, to great career success.

In a way, Jonathan, Paul, and Vincent are somewhat similar. Although Vincent is directionless and aimless, and Jonathan is wildly ambitious and greedy, what they both have in common is the ability to see an opportunity and grasp it. Vincent sees Jonathan as her way out of a poverty-stricken life, while Jonathan travels the world, using his connections and wealth to size up even more potential marks and clients.  Similarly, Paul seizes the opportunity to use his sister’s video recordings to great success in his music career. “….I just took the opportunities that arose, I was hustling just like everyone else… “ (262),

Jonathan also tries to shift the blame to his victims, and while this is certainly a self-serving and selfish perspective, it does contain some elements of truth. How complicit are some of his victims in their own victimization? Do they ever try to look beyond the fictional high returns from the Ponzi scheme? Why are so many satisfied with surface level explanations?  The complicity among the Ponzi victims lies on a spectrum. One of the victims is actually aware of the scheme, but chooses to go along with it, provided he gets a cut of the profits and steady returns. And others simply go with it because they are afraid of looking ignorant if they ask deeper questions. “Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.” (188)

Those who are mostly innocent in the novel are few and far between, namely Ella and Claire. Claire calls the FBI about her father, and Ella is the one who originally tried to alert law enforcement.

Main Themes

Poverty and Wealth

• It wasn’t the stuff that kept her in this strange new life, in the kingdom of money;….What kept her in the kingdom was the previously unimaginable condition of not having to think about money, because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money. If you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life. pg. 87,

Ambition or Direction

• …she knew she was a reasonably intelligent person, but there’s a difference between being intelligent and knowing what to do with your life, pg. 62

Complicity

• We had crossed a line, that much was obvious, but it was difficult to say later exactly where that line had been. Or perhaps we’d all had different lines, or crossed the same line at different times. pg. 149

Transactional Relationships

• She enjoyed being with Jonathan, for the most part, she didn’t mind it, but lately she’d found herself thinking that it might be nice to fall in love, or failing that, at least to sleep with someone she was actually attracted to and to whom she owed nothing. pg. 145

Opportunism

• I couldn’t possibly have seen this coming, he told Vincent, in his head, I just took the opportunities that arose, I was hustling just like everyone else…The opportunities that arose, like you had no choice in the matter? pg. 262,

The Nature of Evil

• It’s possible to know you’re a criminal, a liar, a man of weak moral character, and yet not know it, in the sense of feeling that your punishment is somehow undeserved, that despite the cold facts you’re deserving of warmth and some kind of special treatment. pg. 204

Top Quotes

• But does a person have to be either admirable or awful? Does life have to be so binary? pg. 22
• It wasn’t the stuff that kept her in this strange new life, in the kingdom of money;….What kept her in the kingdom was the previously unimaginable condition of not having to think about money, because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money. If you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life. pg. 87
• We had crossed a line, that much was obvious, but it was difficult to say later exactly where that line had been. Or perhaps we’d all had different lines, or crossed the same line at different times. pg. 149
• you don’t have to be an entirely terrible person, we told ourselves later, to turn a blind eye to certain things—even actively participate in certain other things—when it’s not just you, because who among us is fully alone in the world? There are always other people in the  picture.pg . 154

Recommended Reading

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• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2015)