Name: mara henderson's review of Trust by Hernán Díaz
Item: Trust
Rating: 4
Author: mara henderson

Hernán Díaz

"An award-winning writer of absorbing, sophisticated fiction delivers a stylish and propulsive novel rooted in early 20th century New York, about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception. In glamorous 1920s New York City, two characters of sophisticated taste come together. One is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; the other, the brilliant daughter of penniless aristocrats. Steeped in affluence and grandeur, their marriage excites gossip and allows a continued ascent -- all at a moment when the country is undergoing a great transformation. This is the story at the center of Harold Vanner's novel Bonds, which everyone in 1938 New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version. Provocative, propulsive, and repeatedly surprising, Hernan Diaz's TRUST puts the story of these characters into conversation with the "the truth"-and in tension with the life and perspective of an outsider immersed in the mystery of a competing account. The result is an overarching novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation, engaging the reader in a treasure hunt for the truth that confronts the reality-warping gravitational pull of money, and how power often manipulates facts"--

Trust

Lindsay

taryn a.

A very cool novel. A challenging read. An interesting way to begin understanding finance capital. The pay off is in completing a complex book.

mara henderson

Each part told the same story of a wealthy couple in the 1920s from a different point of view. Really liked the storytelling approach, well-written, and thoughtful but ultimately wanted more, especially from the final part. 

Briana Das

The book only gets interesting around halfway through, contains a nice plot twist. Otherwise, plenty of Wall Street talk. 

Tabea Lüth

I was really let down by the female characterisation in this book - switching from Andrew’s condescending, infantalising descriptions of his wife to the Ida and Mildred’s should have revealed something about the female experience than Andrew wasn’t able to grasp as a man. Sadly, they never felt as authentically written as Andrew. 

g.m.

This book feels deceiving at first; is it a badly written novel of the life in the early 20th century America? But it rears its head into another story perhaps it’s a Cerberus waiting to unleash a third. The second story feels like a parallel of the first but contrived. It’s hiding its secret between the lines. The third one peels off the truth of a great mystery of gaslighting and mansplaining. I wonder how many brilliant women are hiding under the great autobiography of brilliant men of past woe. The last chapter was a delight to read, a great passage of literature that certainly provides context to the stories. This is indeed a Cerberus of a book.

Nate

Chris Dailey

Examination on the power of perspective told ostensibly through the life of a single financier during the gilded age. Told in three parts and following a rich man that seemingly is always one step ahead of the markets and makes a killing doing so. Perception vs. reality is the critical theme with touches of class, sexism, alienation, greed, art, and power dynamics throughout. First and foremost, it's formally creative and provide a nice plot twist at end along with its elegant prose and robust research of the era.

Gelaine Trinidad

This book was assigned for my book club.  Not one I would have personally chosen.  I read this book as an audiobook and I think that where the confusion came in for me.  It did start off a little slow but did becoming intriguing once you got the different perspectives.

This book dive into the lives of the rich and famous Benjamin and Helen Rask written from three different perspectives:  outside third party, autobiography and a memoir.  It is up to the reader to determine which perspective is the truth (if any).

Barbara Williford

This book was assigned for my book club.  Not one I would have personally chosen.  I read this book as an audiobook and I think that where the confusion came in for me.  It did start off a little slow but did becoming intriguing once you got the different perspectives.

This book dive into the lives of the rich and famous Benjamin and Helen Rask written from three different perspectives:  outside third party, autobiography and a memoir.  It is up to the reader to determine which perspective is the truth (if any).

It was very well written and intriguing.

Will Vunderink

A bit of a disappointment; it was not much of a revelation that the single-minded financier depicted in the first two sections did not, in fact, know his dearly beloved wife very well, nor that she turned out to have a larger hand in his business dealings than he was willing to admit. Rather anticlimactic despite its intriguing structure.

I absolutely adored the concept of this book. Finance and the economy is hard to understand and the way Diaz styled it through repetition and through the lens of marriage and relationships made it so much easier to absorb. 

Ali Angco

quite a fan of novels that from the very beginning seem to place a lot of faith in the reader (had to hold myself back from using trust as the obvious pun) - and asks for faith from the reader in turn. 'trust' seems to bring back such a fundamental question in storytelling - what impact can a story have? who do we help in our narratives? who do we hurt? what are we as creators of these stories responsible for, how culpable are we for the ways our stories are received? 

what a stunning unfolding this novel was - something that immediately made me want to go back and forth and weave pieces together. the title in itself, though simple, captures its essence well - trust as a thing to have, a noun, a thing of inherent monetary value and trust as an action, a thing to work towards, something far less tangible and no more fragile than the other. a work that will have me rethinking what a story can do, the places it can take you, for quite some time. 

tiff <3

quite a fan of novels that from the very beginning seem to place a lot of faith in the reader (had to hold myself back from using trust as the obvious pun) - and asks for faith from the reader in turn. 'trust' seems to bring back such a fundamental question in storytelling - what impact can a story have? who do we help in our narratives? who do we hurt? what are we as creators of these stories responsible for, how culpable are we for the ways our stories are received? 

what a stunning unfolding this novel was - something that immediately made me want to go back and forth and weave pieces together. the title in itself, though simple, captures its essence well - trust as a thing to have, a noun, a thing of inherent monetary value and trust as an action, a thing to work towards, something far less tangible and no more fragile than the other. a work that will have me rethinking what a story can do, the places it can take you, for quite some time. 

i think it was shakespeare & company that called 

a palimpsest, and i’ve seen blurbs and reviews cycle through a rotation of adjacent labels: logic puzzle, chess game, quest, build-your-own-adventure, mystery. from different vantage points, pretentious as some of those descriptors are, you can make an argument for most. but for all that saying this makes me want to recoil and retch, the only comparison to work for me so far is that 

felt like... writing? there’s something in the echoes of how building the early pieces of a story can often feel like vivisection, as with the careful precision of choosing sentences and mapping out dialogue, the constant reworking of parts that don’t even exist yet. math and numerical value/precision is understandably a recurring motif in a book that is, technically, historical outsider pov fiction on capitalism as a living, breathing entity, but more than anything, it’s a story about who gets not only to rein in but to alter narrative. its power, its violence, its disregard, its affection, its ability to withhold and award. it’s a story about how money 

fiction, too, and the very design of western economics makes it so that narrative is the real currency we pass around and attach value to. so maybe what i mean is that reading 

 felt exactly like the relationship you form with language as a writer. the high of having it under your control, but also the troubling responsibility of knowing you can decide perception and therefore literal reality with a single word choice. 

it’s easy to fall into the common traps of writing about american capitalism, bc it’s an idea so large and deeply embedded that there’s no way around the elephant in the room. sometimes you can’t be subtle bc it simply makes you complicit to. and 

 isn’t subtle. it’s not the first nor will it be the last to examine how wealth bends reality, for both its holders and those to whom the effects of the one percent’s whims ripple down to. and there 

 several plot choices that veered on…. cartoonish? maybe? dickensian in the way that the artful dodger is, at least. especially near the end with ida and mildred’s sections, since both were burdened with comprising the latter half of the novel and thereby responsible for unearthing and exploring most of the main theses, reveals & resolutions. but if 

is to me the poster child of how execution matters more than hook, 

is the epitome of how lack of total subtlety need not be a weakness for a story that has perfect control over how and when ground control manages every element of the storytelling. i wouldn’t have minded anything this book served me exactly bc its choices carried so much care and deliberation as to be genuinely perfect. it had to be, for it to make a point, for me of all people to know i would forgive a book simply bc its language contains deliberation so absolute it’s seductive, and for a reader to end a novel and find rebalancing in the admonition that narratives will always be rewritten. just bc the most recent version you read feels most like truth does not preclude it from language’s power to make it seem that way, and that’s what makes 

a riddle in some angles, but by no means is it unanswerable. the answer is in the question itself, and that’s its pitch perfect effectiveness to me. 

add to that the idiosyncrasies of each section’s “prose,” the particularities of each section’s angle, even the satisfaction of having ida’s reaction to 

mirror what it was designed to make the reader

feel, the interiority of each character in even obvious caricature, the reflections on what counts as commodity and currency, the underlying terror of that simple, chilling difference as the povs shift away from novelistic to far-seeing. what i found cartoonish at points could very well be the mere reality of it; it’s not like today’s 1% differs much from how inept, spiteful and out-of-touch andrew bevel is. he’s a creature that exists as an idea beyond just the page, though it’s bc he’s written as he is, so specific and so easily parodied, that he stands reflective of more than just a single real-life billionaire. this 

what wealth is: a man-child presented as a mastermind whose authority in a world where money trumps all affords him with power over narrative. and that’s enough. history 

just narrative, as is economics and anthropology and religion and money itself. metatextuality is a hat that gets placed on many heads nowadays, but a story about storytelling executed in this capacity makes me want to start shovelling pages of this book into my mouth if that would address the primal void that finishing it left in me. the motifs of the last section alone—music, call-and-response, kitsch, language and translation—gets me swooning every time. it’s so bad.

i really am sorry to all the friends and online mutuals and coworkers-i-met-only-weeks-ago that had to be subjected to my banshee noises and pictures of no context quotes. it will probably keep happening.

i think it was shakespeare & company that called trust a palimpsest, and i’ve seen blurbs and reviews cycle through a rotation of adjacent labels: logic puzzle, chess game, quest, build-your-own-adventure, mystery. from different vantage points, pretentious as some of those descriptors are, you can make an argument for most. but for all that saying this makes me want to recoil and retch, the only comparison to work for me so far is that trust felt like... writing? there’s something in the echoes of how building the early pieces of a story can often feel like vivisection, as with the careful precision of choosing sentences and mapping out dialogue, the constant reworking of parts that don’t even exist yet. math and numerical value/precision is understandably a recurring motif in a book that is, technically, historical outsider pov fiction on capitalism as a living, breathing entity, but more than anything, it’s a story about who gets not only to rein in but to alter narrative. its power, its violence, its disregard, its affection, its ability to withhold and award. it’s a story about how money is fiction, too, and the very design of western economics makes it so that narrative is the real currency we pass around and attach value to. so maybe what i mean is that reading trust felt exactly like the relationship you form with language as a writer. the high of having it under your control, but also the troubling responsibility of knowing you can decide perception and therefore literal reality with a single word choice. 

it’s easy to fall into the common traps of writing about american capitalism, bc it’s an idea so large and deeply embedded that there’s no way around the elephant in the room. sometimes you can’t be subtle bc it simply makes you complicit to. and trust isn’t subtle. it’s not the first nor will it be the last to examine how wealth bends reality, for both its holders and those to whom the effects of the one percent’s whims ripple down to. and there were several plot choices that veered on…. cartoonish? maybe? dickensian in the way that the artful dodger is, at least. especially near the end with ida and mildred’s sections, since both were burdened with comprising the latter half of the novel and thereby responsible for unearthing and exploring most of the main theses, reveals & resolutions. but if franny and zooey is to me the poster child of how execution matters more than hook, trust is the epitome of how lack of total subtlety need not be a weakness for a story that has perfect control over how and when ground control manages every element of the storytelling. i wouldn’t have minded anything this book served me exactly bc its choices carried so much care and deliberation as to be genuinely perfect. it had to be, for it to make a point, for me of all people to know i would forgive a book simply bc its language contains deliberation so absolute it’s seductive, and for a reader to end a novel and find rebalancing in the admonition that narratives will always be rewritten. just bc the most recent version you read feels most like truth does not preclude it from language’s power to make it seem that way, and that’s what makes trust a riddle in some angles, but by no means is it unanswerable. the answer is in the question itself, and that’s its pitch perfect effectiveness to me. 

add to that the idiosyncrasies of each section’s “prose,” the particularities of each section’s angle, even the satisfaction of having ida’s reaction to bonds mirror what it was designed to make the reader feel, the interiority of each character in even obvious caricature, the reflections on what counts as commodity and currency, the underlying terror of that simple, chilling difference as the povs shift away from novelistic to far-seeing. what i found cartoonish at points could very well be the mere reality of it; it’s not like today’s 1% differs much from how inept, spiteful and out-of-touch andrew bevel is. he’s a creature that exists as an idea beyond just the page, though it’s bc he’s written as he is, so specific and so easily parodied, that he stands reflective of more than just a single real-life billionaire. this is what wealth is: a man-child presented as a mastermind whose authority in a world where money trumps all affords him with power over narrative. and that’s enough. history is just narrative, as is economics and anthropology and religion and money itself. metatextuality is a hat that gets placed on many heads nowadays, but a story about storytelling executed in this capacity makes me want to start shovelling pages of this book into my mouth if that would address the primal void that finishing it left in me. the motifs of the last section alone—music, call-and-response, kitsch, language and translation—gets me swooning every time. it’s so bad.

i really am sorry to all the friends and online mutuals and coworkers-i-met-only-weeks-ago that had to be subjected to my banshee noises and pictures of no context quotes. it will probably keep happening.

sofyan

Wow, so so good. Writing is fantastic, suspenseful, sense of buildup, interesting character development. Exploration of wealth, power, truth.

Sarah Erle

Fraser Simons

So, this was ballsy; I’ve got to give it that. It makes a wonderful point embedded structurally in the text: Those of whom who get to write history, have the ear of the public, affluence—are the predictable, possessing the derivative nature of the privileged often deadens the actual brilliant persona and persons in history. A kind of erasure reserved for those of excellence that do not happen to be white rich men, in other words. 

I think it does this pretty cleverly and the method keeps the pace going even when the craft there is very blasé. There are plenty of blank pages and formatting that clips you along. This is needed because the first entire half of the book is fairly trite. You need the the rush of flying through pages. Then, when the intertextuality examines said issues in the first half itself, it unlocks the Point, which does, I think, make it worth consuming. It’s ballsy, as I said, because I almost bailed on this thing multiple times for better reads because it’s essentially purposefully… bad. And at the start of the book. How many writers would try that?

Ultimately, it kind of means I have to place it at three stars because of how I rate books (3 stars meets the expectations set by the text, 4 stars exceeds expectations, 5 stars more than that) -despite- being fairly novel when it comes to the conclusion, because the mark that it aims to hit—the expectations set by the novel—requires a slog and faith that isn’t completely apparent from the onset. Only for it to then just exactly make its point at the end. There’s no room to exceed my expectations. And it asks more of the reader to do so. 

If another reader really got on with the prose work and/or was particularly enamoured with a particular character voice, which, the last chapter I was happy to read partly because it -was- the only engagingly crafted voice, then I think it could easily be a higher rated book… for that reader. For me, the prose work is pretty consistently out-of-the-way and not much more. Bog standard contemporary voice, basically. Unusual structure would usually give it a boost, but again, it’s a point it barely pulls off. So yeah, it does the thing. With some daring. Which isn’t nothing. Is it worth reading? It really depends if you have the kind of stamina and faith in the writer to actually get to the end. And that you resonate with what the author attempts to communicate. I think it will be a difficult book to recommend to most people.

Anthony Mercurio

Rachel Kwon

kite

From an award-winning chronicler of our nation’s history and its legends comes his much-anticipated novel about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth 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 brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur excites gossip. Rumors about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helen’s reclusiveness start to spread—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of a successful 1938 novel entitled Bonds, which all of New York seems to have read. But it isn’t the only version. Hernan Diaz’s Trust brilliantly puts the story of these characters into conversation with other accounts—and in tension with the life and perspective of a young woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation. Provocative and propulsive, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts. An elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality, Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes.

taryn a. &
Trust by Hernán Díaz

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taryn a. &Trust by Hernán Díaz

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taryn a. &
Trust by Hernán Díaz