Trust
Ratings115
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings115
Average rating3.8
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE
“Buzzy and enthralling . . . A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery . . . Fun as hell to read.” —Oprah Daily
"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ’20s and Great Depression." —Vanity Fair
“A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed.” —Esquire
"Exhilarating.” —New York Times
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.
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.
I wanted to rate this really highly, for the first half of the book is easily a 4.5 star read. I enjoyed the writing of Benjamin and Helen Rask, the story of their lives and the financial explanations. The 3rd quarter, where Andrew and Ida spoke lost me and I didn't love Mildred's diaries. I found the second half mismatched and patchy, difficult to get into. 3.5 rounded down.
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
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