[Written by ChatGPT]
This book came into my hands through a thoughtful book club member who not only recommended it with a captivating introduction but generously left her copy with me. With a title like Trust, the meanings are already layered: Do we trust what we read? Is this about financial trusts? Trust between people? I’ll be honest—had it not been for her recommendation, I likely would have stopped just a few pages in. But I’m so glad I didn’t.
At first, Trust feels bland. But patience is rewarded. The narrative unfolds through four distinct voices, each reshaping what came before. Our brains are wired to read linearly, but this novel challenges that. You have to move through each version of the story—fictional novel, unfinished memoir, ghostwriter’s account, and finally a diary—to arrive at the most authentic voice. That last voice reframes everything and lingers long after the final page.
It’s quite interesting in structure and storytelling. The format reminds me why I love literary fiction: the aftershocks of thought, the desire to reread, and the wish that I could somehow take in all the voices at once, in parallel. Trust asks us to think deeply about narrative, memory, and power. It’s no surprise it won the Pulitzer—it earns it with every layer.
Like the characters in the book, our minds bend and align reality. Doesn’t history also? In a world of competing voices, truth is not what happened, but what endures.
Trust by Hernan Diaz is a layered, metafictional novel that explores the nature of wealth, power, authorship, and truth. Structured as a novel within a novel (and more), it unfolds in four distinct but interconnected parts, each reframing the narrative from a different perspective. The central thread revolves around the enigmatic financier Benjamin Rask, loosely based on historical tycoons like Andrew Mellon, and his wife Helen, whose emotional and intellectual life remains obscured by male narratives—until later parts bring her voice to light.
Summary by Part
“Bonds” – A fictional novel attributed to Harold Vanner This part resembles a traditional Gilded Age novel, portraying Benjamin Rask as a financial genius who amasses vast wealth during the 1929 crash. His wife, Helen, is depicted as fragile and reclusive. The story seems complete—until the next part calls its reliability into question. “My Life” – A memoir fragment by Andrew Bevel Bevel, a real-life financier, claims “Bonds” was a slanderous, thinly veiled portrait of him. He writes his own memoir to set the record straight, but it’s incomplete, contradictory, and often more concerned with shaping legacy than revealing truth. His depiction of his wife Mildred (Helen’s counterpart) is shallow and utilitarian. “A Memoir, Remembered” – Recollections by Ida Partenza Ida, an Italian-American writer hired to ghostwrite Bevel’s memoir, reflects years later on the strange experience. As she uncovers more about Mildred and Bevel’s manipulations, she begins to question everything, including her own complicity in shaping the false narrative. “Futures” – A diary by Mildred Bevel The final section is the most intimate and haunting. Written from Helen/Mildred’s point of view during her time in a Swiss sanatorium, it reveals her emotional depth, intellectual brilliance, and the ways in which she was silenced and erased by the men around her.
Themes
Power and Wealth: How capital shapes not only society but truth itself. Authorship and Authority: Who gets to tell the story, and how that affects legacy. Gender and Erasure: Mildred’s voice, hidden until the final act, reframes everything that came before. Truth vs. Fiction: The novel challenges the reader to ask what is real, and whether “truth” can ever be objective when power is involved.
Final Thought
Trust is a sophisticated, multi-voiced novel that deliberately plays with narrative form to show how history, memory, and identity are constructed—and often distorted—by those with the means to control the narrative.
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