The Madness of Crowds

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I started writing The Madness of Crowds at the end of March 2020, as I sat at home in quarantine. I’d made it across the Canadian border, and into my home, just as the border closed.

A day earlier I’d had dinner with a friend in New York City. Next thing I knew, I was racing to get home to a two-week quarantine that turned into a three-month lockdown. Then, then, then …

We all know what happened. No need to repeat it here. You lived exactly the same thing, whether your home is in Crete or São Paulo, Birmingham or Saskatoon. It was the first global shared experience.

People wrote to ask if I’d put the pandemic into the next Gamache book. How would it affect Three Pines? I wrote back to say that I thought the last thing anyone would want to read about, and relive, was the coronavirus pandemic. And I meant it.

But halfway through the first draft I realized I needed to talk about it. But how?

And so I decided to set The Madness of Crowds post-pandemic. As the world returned to “normal.” But the bruising remained. The sorrow, the tragedies, but also the oddly rich blessings.

I wanted, as I suspect you did too, to believe that we would emerge. That families, friends, strangers could get together again, unafraid. Unmasked. That we could embrace, and kiss, hold hands and have meals together.

And so that’s how the pandemic is handled in this book, as you probably know by now. And you’ll also know that the experience, the theme of a contagion, reverberates throughout the book.

How crowds of decent people can be infected by a certain madness. How extraordinary delusions become popular.

And that brings me to the title. It’s taken from a book, which is real and is also in Gamache’s library, called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It was first published in 1841 by Charles Mackay. It’s a series of nonfiction essays looking at why sane people believe the nuttiest things. Things that, in normal times, they’d easily dismiss. Like Tulipmania. The South Sea Bubble. Like stories of hauntings. Witches.

What happens to tip people over into madness?

I’d first come across the book as a teenager when my mother, who’d gone back to work in her late forties and qualified as an investment dealer in Toronto, began reading it. It was suggested reading, and probably still is, for stockbrokers since so much of what they deal with is “smoke and mirrors.” Perception rather than reality. And how perception can shape and actually become reality. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s what is visited on the village of Three Pines.

In order to write this book I needed help.

As always, the first person I want to thank is Lise Desrosiers, my great friend and assistant. Thank you to Linda Lyall (Linda in Scotland), who answers many of your letters (though I read them all) and manages much of the internet presence.

Thank you to Jennifer Enderlin and her son, Nick, for helping me to at least begin to understand about having a child who is so much more than their Down syndrome.

Thank you to Danny and Lucy and Ben McAuley, who run Brome Lake Books in my village of Knowlton, Québec, and who are great friends.

Thank you to Rocky and Steve Gottlieb. To Sally and Cynthia and Sarah. To Kirk and Walter. Brendan and Oscar. To Hardye and Don, Bonnie and Kap, Sukie, Patsy, Tom, Hillary, for your presence, virtual and otherwise. To Dorie Greenspan for the Gamache lemon cookies and your support as we both finished our books, and commiserated. Her new book, out in October, is called Baking with Dorie. To Chelsea and Marc, for the Zooms with family. To Will Schwalbe, for your friendship and cheery messages, from one writer to another. From one friend to another. Thank you, Tom Corradine, for keeping me from becoming a complete blob—bastard.

To so many people who make life livable. And, of course, to the frontline workers locally and beyond, who really did make life livable.

To my brother Doug, who sheltered in place with me. We actually built a screen porch while in lockdown!

And when it came to the actual writing, thank you to Allida Black for her guidance. To TJ Rogers, who has, for more than a decade, defended and served survivors of torture and who helped me to understand what Haniya Daoud might have experienced. To Sam Wijay. To Dr. David Rosenblatt and Dr. Mary Hague-Yearl (who isn’t entirely fictional) for help with the remarkable Osler Library at McGill, and the stain that was Ewen Cameron.

Thank you, Tyler Vigen, who really does have a site called Spurious Correlations and allowed me to use it and his name. And my friend, the gifted writer and thinker Andrew Solomon. At one stage I considered calling this book Far from the Tree—which was a nod to his own brilliant book. I wrote and asked how he’d feel about that, and he could not have been more generous.

Thank you to Kelley Ragland, my U.S. editor with Minotaur Books. To Paul Hochman and Sarah Melnyk and, of course, the man who leads them all, Andy Martin, the publisher. To Don Weisberg, who heads up Macmillan U.S. and is both smart and wise, and a fine man. To John Sargent, one of the great publishers of our generation.

Thank you to Louise Loiselle of Flammarion Québec, Jo Dickinson of Hodder UK, and all the publishers worldwide who work so hard to get these books into people’s hands.

A huge, heartfelt thank-you to my amazing agent, David Gernert, and his wonderful team at The Gernert Company. And to the legendary Mike Rudell, who passed away and is missed every day.

Speaking of that, each day when I sit at the dining table in front of the laptop, I close my eyes and ask for help and guidance. For courage. I thank my own Michael, for never really leaving me. For always being here and helping me along the way. I thank my good friend Betsy. And I thank Hope Dellon—my longtime editor and friend.

I feel their presence every day. Guiding me along as I navigate life. Helping me as I write.

All this to say, if you didn’t like the book, it’s their fault.