Trust
2022 • 416 pages
Ratings46
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings46
Average rating3.9
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Vulture, Oprah Daily, AV Club, LitHub, Goodreads and more and a Best Book of the Year by Reader's Digest and Vogue An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is trying to be too clever. I get the concept of using multiple stories to strip back the truth, but this in places was just plain unreadable.
The first story is alluded to through the rest of the book as some literary masterpiece. It is instead a badly written piece of dry prose that is just plain boring. That conceit that this is a brilliant novel just does not work and undermines a lot of the story telling later.
The second of the stories is the most problematic one, written as an outline to a journal. The fact that it is just an outline means that it is incomplete and basically nonsensical in places. The stylistic choice was entirely unnecessary.
The third story is more readably but because it leans on the previous two it is ultimately undermined.
The final story is again a journal (although fortunately more complete in this case). The final reveal of the truth is moderately well done, but not enough to wash away the absolute drivel at the start of the book.
No way near as smart as it thinks it is
I am not a “no spoilers!” person. It's one of the reasons I don't read a lot of mystery: I find too much plot tension more irritating than exciting. But some books really are better if you don't know that much going in, and this is one of those. Trust me (see what I did there?). Here's what I think is safe to share: this book is four books in one: a novella, a rough draft of an autobiography, a short memoir, and a series of journal entries. It's concerned with New York City in the 1920s: up to and very much including Black Tuesday and its aftermath. It's about finance, and marriage, and the bonds between people. It's about stories, both the ones we tell to ourselves and the ones we tell to others. It's about who lies, and why. Given that it recently won the Pulitzer Prize, it feels very cliche to say it's very good but it is. I found it very compelling and tore through its 400 pages in about three days. I don't know that it will be something everyone will enjoy, necessarily, but it's worth a shot.
Loved the format and the “story within a story” - a rich investment in characters and the story being told in layers, was the hook. Hernan Diaz made it hard for you to have a reliable narrator, which is part of the hook of the book - however by the time you get to the “third book”, you're already in cruising mode, and if it did not have that third book - this would be a 5.
