Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust is a puzzlebox story wherein four different characters tell you their version of the same narrative and it’s up to the reader to decide which character they “trust”... even though it’s pretty obvious what is the right interpretation (and y’know also “trust” as in money).
In a novel by Harold Vanner called Bonds, Benjamin Rask is a brilliant American financier who made a fortune in the 1920s but whose beloved wife Helen suffers from mental illness and must go to a Swiss sanatorium for treatment.
In an incomplete memoir, Andrew Bevel is the real name of Rask and whose wife Mildred did go to a Swiss sanatorium but not for her mental health.
In a modern-day retrospective, Ida Partenza was Bevel’s ghost writer for the incomplete memoir who provides another perspective on the situation.
And finally we hear from Mildred Bevel herself in her last journal before her death.
I really enjoyed the first part - the fake novel within a novel - which told an enthralling tale well and set the stage for a tantalising unravelling in the later parts (the contents page prepares you for the structure of the book). Alas, Diaz puts his best foot forward with Bonds and the novel is an increasingly disappointing read from that point on.
Bevel’s memoir was sporadically interesting but didn’t do a whole lot to differentiate itself from the first section. It’s short though and I kept hoping that the next two parts would make sense of this rather weak second.
But then we get to Ida Partenza’s third part, and this is the longest and worst section of the book. Instead of doing much of anything - either building upon or tearing down what preceded it, or hint at any supposed scandal over who Bevel really was or what he did (did he cause the Wall St crash?) - we get interminable pages on her dreary anarchist typesetter father who’s bitter about his lot in life and her unremarkable time with Bevel.
Ida gets her job with Bevel and much of what we’ve already read is related back. I think we’re meant to draw parallels between Bevel and Ida’s dad - both widowers who are lying to themselves about their lives - though I’m not sure what the effect is meant to be. Mostly this section feels superfluous, drawn out, and tedious to read. I went from really enjoying the book to being totally ambivalent towards it thanks to part three and just wanted the book to be over. And all that we’re given is a minor tidbit into Bevel’s true character which doesn’t feel at all surprising.
Mildred’s fourth and final section is the shortest part of the book and contained the biggest “bombshell” of the story, although it didn’t seem all that dramatic. I felt thoroughly underwhelmed - 400 pages to get to that? So what?
Narrative bellyaching aside, Diaz is a fine writer and the novel is a breeze to get through. The puzzlebox format is a strong one, particularly as the book started promisingly, and it did make me want to keep turning the pages - even if I wasn’t enjoying a section, there was always the potential of the next one making up for it, so I flew through a fairly substantial book in no time at all.
The problem is that all of the good stuff is front-loaded and the story doesn’t have the legs to keep that pace for the remainder of the book. Despite all of those pages, the story doesn’t go much further than what we’re initially presented with and the reveals Diaz musters up along the way are quite poor and disappointing.
The premise of a mythically successful Wall St tycoon and his mysterious wife is a great one, parts of the book are really engaging and Diaz writes it all with accomplished prose. But he doesn’t deliver on the twists required for his novel’s structure - Trust has a lot of intriguing build-up for a very underwhelming payoff. Not a bad book but also one that wasn’t nearly as good as I’d hoped, especially given the awards attention it garnered, nor one that I’d recommend to the general reader.
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