As well as being a cracking read that
ultimately fleshes out all its characters, “Trust” deals with matters such as
the nature of capitalism, personal responsibility and, above all, truth (Review
by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
A first look, Hernan Diaz’s second novel, Trust, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is a curious one. It is divided into four sections, each of which tells more or less the same story but from a different perspective. It makes for a compelling read, set in the cauldron of the inter-war years in America, specifically in Wall Street. So it covers the Crash and the Great Depression.
The first section purports to be a novel, Bonds, which tells the tale of Benjamin and Helen Rask, a pair of misfits whose incredible wealth is made from Benjamin playing the stock exchange before and after the Crash of 1929. They are reclusive but famous, both for their money and their philanthropy. But not long after the Crash, Helen descends into insanity which leads to her death in a Swiss sanatorium.
Next comes the unfinished and self-justifying autobiography of one Andrew Bevel, entitled My Life, written almost in note form. Bevel paints himself as a financial genius who made a fortune on Wall Street in the post-World War 1 years and lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous with his retiring and gentle wife, Mildred. It soon becomes obvious that Bevel is the model for Benjamin Rask, and his aim is to refute the novel’s claims about both his working and personal lives.
And from there we move to the life story of Ida Partenza, told in the first person as A Memoir, Remembered. Ida, writing from the perspective of the 1980s, is apparently a well-respected novelist, but recounts the days of her youth and her first job, working for Andrew Bevel, after the death of his wife. She was employed to ghost-write his autobiography.
This is the longest section in Trust and is fascinating both for the story it tells and for the quality of the writing, especially coming after the self-serving and unpleasant My Life. Besides telling a story, the whole novel is about narration and narrators, reliable and unreliable.
In the final section, entitled Futures, with its echoes of financial markets and in contrast to everything which has gone before and which deals with the past, we eventually get to hear the voice of Mildred/Helen through a diary written at the end of her life which answers many of the questions raised earlier.
As well as being a cracking read that ultimately fleshes out all its characters, Trust deals with matters such as the nature of capitalism, personal responsibility and, above all, truth. - Margaret von Klemperer
Trust by Hernan Diaz is published by Picador. ISBN: 978-1-5290-7450-5
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