Going as far back as a small-town childhood in Illinois and following Glass until 2003 when the novel was published, The Fabulist delivers on the promise of the entire truth. Glass does not hold anything back, handing out even the smallest of details surrounding the scandal that made a household name out of Stephen Glass.
The novel quickly covers details of early life and a college career, instead primarily focusing on the scandal itself and its aftermath. Glass discusses the hardships that came along with becoming famous overnight, from a crumbling marriage to the constant bombardment of phone calls and emails from former colleagues hoping to get an exclusive interview. After temporarily moving back to the Glass hometown of Highland Park, Glass moves back to Washington D.C. in an attempt to reconcile with his wife. After Glass’s marriage finally halted, Glass had a short stint working at a movie rental store, taking a bit of time to figure out how to be truly honest. Glass slowly adjusted to this new level of work, and almost as soon as Glass became used to the pace of movie rental he was fired, as the boss had finally uncovered the past that Glass could not shake. Glass jumped around for a while, unsure of what to do with himself, and during this time primarily focused on reconnecting with his rabbi and inadvertently God. The novel ends with Glass finding a new home in New York and moving there in an attempt to escape all that haunted the ex-journalist. Glass’s struggle with gratification led him down the wrong path, and since then Glass has been attempting to right his wrongs. During the last decade, Glass has paid all the magazines who were subject to scrutiny for publishing one of the fabricated stories, in an attempt to clear up an extremely battered conscience. Glass reverted back into what his parents had always wanted, instead of a passionate writer the expectation was a doctor or a lawyer, and although being denied entrance to the New York and California State Bars, Glass is working as a director of special projects at a personal injury law firm in Beverly Hills.