ralentina reviewed The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
A great 'easy' read
3 stars
Not really a mystery novel, but a sort of choral intrigue. The story revolves around a financial fraud, a Ponzi scheme to be precise, orchestrated by Jonathan Alkaitis, who took money from investors and used it to maintain the appeareance of high returns while actually not investing in anything, which I believe is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. The book explores the perspective of many of those involved: large, rich investors, smaller, midlle-class investors, complicit colleagues, their wives and husbands, Alkaitis himself and, at the centre of all, Vincent, Alkaitis pretend trophy wife, a charming but-lost young woman that comes dangerously close to a stereotype (perhaps my main criticism of the book). The novel is well written and does a very good job of keeping you hooked, weaving together all the different threads to build a very complex picture but without resulting difficult to follow. It has also a …
Not really a mystery novel, but a sort of choral intrigue. The story revolves around a financial fraud, a Ponzi scheme to be precise, orchestrated by Jonathan Alkaitis, who took money from investors and used it to maintain the appeareance of high returns while actually not investing in anything, which I believe is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. The book explores the perspective of many of those involved: large, rich investors, smaller, midlle-class investors, complicit colleagues, their wives and husbands, Alkaitis himself and, at the centre of all, Vincent, Alkaitis pretend trophy wife, a charming but-lost young woman that comes dangerously close to a stereotype (perhaps my main criticism of the book). The novel is well written and does a very good job of keeping you hooked, weaving together all the different threads to build a very complex picture but without resulting difficult to follow. It has also a certain depth, in that it explores the question of responsibility, in the sense that all the characters are responsible for something: doing the wrong thing, not doing the right thing, pretend not to know what they are doing, getting someone else to do the wrong thing...
