Review: TRUST

This past week my husband, daughter, and I listened to the co-Pulitzer Prize fiction winner for 2023, Trust by Hernan Diaz. In a nutshell it is the same story, or parallel stories, told from four perspectives. Spoiler alert: Disclosure of more plot details than most reviews is necessary to differentiate the four versions.

Trust opens with the text of Bonds, a (fictional) novel written by Harold Vanner, about a wealthy recluse, Benjamin Rask, who makes a killing in the 1920s stock market and is viewed as an investing savant. Rask's wife, Helen, is also a bit of a recluse and she eventually dies of a mental health treatment. Rask is devastated but will go on.

The second section of Trust is the outline of an unfinished and highly self-aggrandized autobiography of Andrew Bevel, a New York financier and widower, whose life parallels the story of Harold Rask in Bonds. We learn in the third iteration that Bevel wanted to write his autobiography to set the story straight about details of his late wife Mildred's life. Bevel hires Ida Partenza to assist/write his autobiography but doesn't allow her to do any independent research, particularly when it comes to the details of Mildred's life and her passions. When Ida manages to dig up a few details, Bevel says she cannot use that material in the book, preferring to represent Mildred in the most sweet, quiet, and demure ways. The autobiography remains unfinished because Bevel dies before its completion. Years later when Ida is asked to write a new piece on the famous Bevel couple, she finds a diary which tells a fourth, completely different account in Mildred's own words.

Who is the reader to trust? Are all the stories partially true so one needs all four to piece together the information? These questions got me thinking about the definitions of the word 'trust.' Here is what I found in Merriman-Webster:

Reading through all these definitions of the word TRUST, I feel certain that Hernan Diaz did the same thing as he was creating his masterpiece. How many different riffs on the word 'Trust' could he place in one book? Maybe he challenged himself to include them all. Certainly each narrator, even the fictional novelist Vanner, asks the reader to believe their version of the story. Though a novel, everyone in New York knew that Bonds was really about the Bevels, so believed what they read even though it was presented as fiction. Because of this Bevel hired Ida Partenza to write his story and the story of his late wife. He relied on Ida to keep his confidences. In his version of the story Bevel admitted he had to entrust the care of his wife to professionals at a Swiss Sanitorium. You get the idea. Only when we, the readers, hear from Mildred through her diary, do we realize our trust has been misplaced. Very clever!

Whenever a book wins a Pulitzer Prize I always want to know why the committee chose this book over that book, or in this year's case why co-winners were chosen. The Pulitzer Committee said about Trust --

A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king. From Pulitzer.org’s 2023 winners page

And for comparison, the same committee said about Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, the other 2023 co-winner --

A masterful recasting of “David Copperfield,” narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them. From Pulitzer.org’s 2023 winners page

(My husband just stopped by and read through my review. When he got to this point about the two Pulitzer winners he remarked, "One book is about capitalism in America and the other is about what capitalism causes, poverty.") I guess the selection committee couldn't make up their mind which was the more American story.

 

As I said earlier, we listened to the audiobook of Trust narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marno, and Orlagh Cassidy. All did a remarkable job narrating their role and thankfully none of them used that irritating speaking quality of dropping their voice, making it hard to hear over road noise. All three of us liked the book but felt a bit challenged by the form. Was our confusion caused by only hearing the text not seeing it on the printed page? If you are considering reading Trust, remind yourself that all four parts are not equal in terms of readability (listenability) but all build on the earlier section. Parts one and two are necessary to appreciate parts three and four.

Trust is 416 pages long, qualifying it for the Big Book Summer Challenge.

-Anne