Trust | Book Review

Trust

Hernan Diaz

402 pages

Paperback

Picador

2022

ISBN: 9781529074529

Review

‘Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail – we are ruined by forces beyond our control.’

Andrew Bevel, a fabulously rich Wall Street trader with a gift for seeing trends before others, and his young wife Mildred bask in 1920s New York. Theirs is a seemingly carefree existence filled with extravagance and speculation. It is only when the layers of their lives are peeled away that we uncover the shocking secrets hidden by their wealth.

‘Trust’ was a book which I dearly wanted to love. A puzzle book set in the jazz age, and a novels-set-within-novels structure to boot? What’s not to love? The book does deliver on some of these promises – 1920s New York is beautifully evoked and the introverted, frantic, obsessive world of the trader makes for compelling copy.

Mildred’s deterioration is also well articulated, her mental health one of the few emotional hooks in the novel. Diaz succeeds in making us shudder as she undergoes some of the more misguided therapies in medical history, whilst her quiet, unassuming philanthropy and passion makes her the closest thing to a hero that the novel has.

Elsewhere I found the book more of a struggle. The novel-within-a-novel which makes up the first part of the book – ‘Bonds’ by Harold Vanner – is a torpid affair. Diaz’s characterisation of Vanner as a hack is faithfully borne out in the writing with the unfortunate result that we are forced to wade through textbook-dry prose for over a hundred pages. Yes, it sets the rest of the book up, but it did try my patience.

Elsewhere, and without giving too much away, it comes as no great surprise that Bevel – a trader who bets on and profits handsomely from the 1929 crash – has a questionable moral framework. This framework extends to encompass his much younger wife and the legacy she leaves behind. I found this predictable, especially as I knew that the book would be told from several points of view.

We are meant to get behind the character of Ida, the ghostwriter of Bevel’s counter-memoir. Ida is working class and has a father who is passionate about socialism. This sets up what I found to be a grimly-predictable and not particularly exciting moral dilemma for Ida as she seeks to reconcile her upbringing with the opportunity in front of her.

Perhaps this was a book that I just didn’t get. It is certainly widely-lauded elsewhere, winning the 2023 Pulitzer and awarding itself a subsidiary quasi-dustjacket so as to render its plaudits. Pleb though I might be, I do look someone to root for in a novel. This was lacking in that capacity, and was a novel which relied too heavily upon its premise and structure.

*Find my other reviews below*

Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White

Hilary Mantel – Mantel Pieces

Kevin Barry – The Heart in Winter

Lauren Oyler – No Judgement

George Mackay Brown – A Time to Keep

Sarah Moss – Summerwater

Stephen King – 11.22.63

Damon Galgut – The Promise

Francine Toon – Pine

Robert Winder – Bloody Foreigners

P. G. Wodehouse – Very Good, Jeeves

Michael Palin – Erebus: The History of a Ship

Hilary Mantel – The Mirror and the Light

Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet

Raynor Winn – The Salt Path

Samantha Harvey – The Western Wind

Diarmaid MacCulloch – Thomas Cromwell: A Life

Peter Carey – A Long Way from Home

W.C. Ryan – A House of Ghosts

Val McDermid – A Place of Execution

Richard Cohen – How to Write Like Tolstoy

George Orwell – 1984

John Sampson – The Wind on the Heath

Michelle Paver – Wakenhyrst

Jess Smith – Way of the Wanderers

Zadie Smith – Feel Free

Max Hastings – Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975

Bernard MacLaverty – Grace Notes

Ernest Hemingway – In Our Time

Andrew Roberts – Napoleon the Great

Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights

Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale

Kamila Shamsi – Home Fire

Annie Proulx – Brokeback Mountain

Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See

Ellipsis: Three magazine

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

Jon McGregor – Reservoir 13

Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad

Amor Towles – A Gentleman in Moscow

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘Deposition‘ and ‘The Worst Part‘.

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Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He ha