Trust – Hernan Diaz
Expectation: A layered and nuanced old money mystery.
Reality: A sometimes difficult structure and alternating POVs made it uneven but still engaging, even if the payoff wasn't totally there in the end.
My Take:
“Trust” has an interesting premise, but it wasn’t enough to sustain this quasi-mystery over more than 400-pages. Even with occasional flashes of greatness, it was a slog to get through.
It’s not a terrible novel by any means. Hernan Diaz is a gifted writer who gave four distinct narrators interesting story arcs, but it was needlessly over-wrought considering the payoff.
Told in four parts — each providing perspective on the life of a Wall Street tycoon pre-World War II — it’s a mixture of historical fiction and literary fiction that is reminiscent of upper crust classics by Fitzgerald and Wharton with the faux-celebrity intrigue of Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Unfortunately each section is not created equally.
Diaz starts the book with a jolt in “Bonds,” the fictionalized tell-all about Benjamin and Helen Rusk. Benjamin is a Wall Street wunderkind seemingly able to predict every downturn before it happens. Helen is his old money art and music loving wife who relishes in supporting causes close to her heart. They are, essentially, two solitary souls living together out of mutual respect rather than love before illness tears them apart.
“Bonds” is melodramatic and completely engaging. Unfortunately nothing else matched it.
The second part is the mostly stream of consciousness “My Life,” by Andrew Bevel, whom we learn is the focus of “Bonds.” Through work in progress notes, he is working hard to reframe the narrative — especially of his wife, Mildred — while also defending his continued luck and success. To go from a cohesive narrative in “Bonds” to a bunch of half-baked ideas in “My Life” was confusing.
The third part, while a complete 180 degree shift from the previous sections, does start to put the pieces together. The problem is that I was becoming less and less interested in what those pieces meant. Ida Partenza is hired to help Bevel finish his autobiography. While Partenza digs into the “true” story, Bevel becomes more controlling, which creates friction with her father and boyfriend.
Representing more than half of the novel, it felt like a standalone story considering the emphasis on Partenza’s home life. Through her we get a better sense of what life was like for the masses during a period of political and financial insecurity, but I became increasingly less interested.
The final part, “Futures” by Mildred Bevel, is akin to part two. It’s a balance of memories — told through her calendar — and final reveals that seem to make or break the novel for most readers. They were interesting but not gasp-inducing to me.
Ultimately, as I moved from one disparate and loosely connected section to the next, I wondered “what’s the point of it all?” Was Diaz trying to humanize a misunderstood robber baron? Was this a treatise on making celebrities out of business people? Was it just to be taken at entertaining face value?
Whatever the intent, I can appreciate the skill required to craft a story like this, but it fell way short of expectations.
The audiobook was a solid effort featuring a different narrator for each section, many of whom are audiobook all-starts.
Edoardo Ballerini was Harold Banner, the author of “Bonds,” who expertly set the tone for the story, and Jonathan Davis gave Andrew Bevel a detached, authoritative air. However, the women were the stars, with Mozhan Marnò as Ida Portenza and Orlagh Cassidy as Mildred Bevel providing two compelling and engaging performances.
If you’re still interested in reading this novel, I highly encourage the audiobook, but know that it takes a fair amount of concentration given the non-linear storytelling.
Rating (story): 3/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Formats: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: October 21 – October 27, 2022
Multi-tasking: Okay. There’s a lot of subtle detail and character development you can easily miss if you aren’t paying close attention.
