Trust: Four Stories within Stories. Which Will You Trust?

Posted On April 9, 2023

Hi Readers! It’s another book review this time! I read Trust almost a month ago and yet the story is still very fresh in my mind. Probably because it’s unlike any book I’ve ever read. Or because the content is such that will keep you wondering for days. Or simply because it is not just open ended but left up to readers’ interpretation throughout its 400 pages! It was longlisted for the Booker Prize for 2022. I can see why it was longlisted but also why it didn’t make the shortlist. Dig in!

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

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 incites 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.

~~FOUR PARTS~~

The first part of the book is a novel within novel entitled ‘Bonds’ by Harold Vanner. At about 125 pages, this fictional novel does its job of reeling the reader into its multifaceted universe. Bonds is about Benjamin and Helen Rask, who are the fictionalized characters of Andrew and Mildred Bevel. We see how they have rich lives maneuvered by Benjamin’s cut-throat methods of making money in the stock market. We see a perfect couple from the outside but a pretend and reclusive one on the inside. Towards the end, Andrew as much as pushes Mildred to her death. She is mentally unwell and cruel ‘convulsive therapies’ are done to fix her which Andrew approves. This side of the story really reflects on how you can’t buy everything with money.

The second part is a very rough draft of Andrew Bevel’s autobiography titled ‘My Life’. It’s quite short and looks like it’s in the very early stages of writing. At many places, there are sentences like More Tommy. More about mother. A few little stories. Details. This attempt of a an autobiography seems very clearly to be written in defence as an answer to the bestsellong novel Bonds.

The third part is titled ‘A Memoir, Remembered’ written by Ida Partenza. This is written after the death of Andrew. And apparently by his shadow writer Ida. Being an unbiased third party to the story, you would be inclined to listen to her insights into the Bevels. But I found this part too long, too boring and hard to believe.

The forth and final part written by Mildred Bevel is titled ‘Futures’. This includes diary entries from the time that Mildred was in the hospital. It’s the shortest part and makes little sense.

~~MY INTERPRETATION & THOUGHTS~~

When a novel is written the way this one is, I think the sequence is crucial. No matter what, we all have biases. Those of us who love novels, will trust Bonds as the actual story. Those of us who love memoirs, will trust My Life or A Memoir, Remembered. Which part you trust largely depends who you are as a person, what do you do, what are your likes and more importantly dislikes, what motivates you. So, reading this book is like a mirror, which will not only help you in interpreting the truth, but will also help you understand why you chose that particular part.

As a person who reads to escape from reality, I initially refused to think more about the book after I finished it. But also as someone who need closure, I went back to it and was in an overthinking phase. As a person who has a halo effect bias, I inclined towards believing some aspects of the first part. As a person who loves reading about unhinged women and toxic men, I found My Life to be far from the truth. As a person who writes and loves journaling, I thought that Futures couldn’t have been anything but the truth.

Almost all parts of Trust are overdramatic and exaggerated. I believed some part of each of them within reason. For example, I thought Andrew was behind the economic crises but I did not believe he forced those cruel therapies to cure his wife. I did think that he was furious about the Bonds novel, but that didn’t mean whatever he wrote in his faux autobiography was the truth, especially because he didn’t even write it himself. I believed Ida and Andrew’s working relationship to be dire, but also felt there was too much unnecessary story line about her father and the sections about anarchy. Basically, whatever your thoughts are about the novel, they are unabashedly the real you. And, I don’t think any other book I’ve ever read made me feel so strongly about it.

My rating for the novel is not very high. The reasons for that are too much talk is about finance, stocks, consumerism. Also, Part Three was way too long and that perspective in itself could’ve been better if it were by someone closer to the Bevels. Part Four being diary entries was something I was interested in, but unfortunately it was mostly gibberish and way too short. That being an important female voice deserved more sane content.

Whether you love or hate this book, I hope you are at least intrigued by it and would consider reading it. I have rated Trust by Hernan Diaz at 3.5/5 stars.

Until next time,