THE COUNTING HOUSE

A once-celebrated Chief Investment Officer has a crisis of faith about his life’s work.

After The Green and the Black (2016), nonfiction about the shale gas industry, Sernovitz returns to territory covered in his novel The Contrarians (2002)—a finance man in crisis. The setting is an unnamed university, where its unnamed, middle-aged CIO has doubled the endowment from $3 billion to $6 billion. Unfortunately, he’s floundering now, after “a very bad year,” and fears he’ll be fired anytime. At endless meetings with staff, trustees, and managers pitching investment schemes, the CIO’s trademark repartee starts landing flat. Anyone could blow the whistle about his failure at any moment, including his sharpest staff member, Emily, who believes she “can do well by doing good” with lots of wealth. Meanwhile, everyone’s urging him to seek advice from an enigmatic billionaire alum named Michael Hermann. The CIO used to pride himself on being politically liberal, full of Jewish guilt, and hyper-informed. But his self-awareness is voracious. Sernovitz’s prose and focus then shifts to map the CIO’s fears about the meaningless of life, how universities leverage greed, and the inanity of modern investing. Until, to the shock of his staff, he is literally asking strangers during meetings, “Why do you do this?” The novel doesn’t pretend the one percent care about anything but money, but Sernovitz seems to also want the CIO to be relatable. On the one hand, the CIO laments “the financialization of our economy, our society, and the ambitions of too many young people,” and he feels genuine pain and exhaustion as he looks for leftovers in his fridge. But, on the other hand, because he’s told us, we also know it’s a $12,000 fridge.

Insightful and fun, but based on a premise only a millionaire could love.