LoveReading Says
Like shards of light glinting through a prism, Hernan Diaz’s Trust casts multiple perspectives on the same privileged married couple to reveal truths about human nature, the nature of truth, and our connections to capital.
It’s a cunning, captivating novel with all the draw of a mystery as it presents stories within stories within stories, unwrapping different realities through writing that spans the muscular, the beautiful, and the elemental. Exploring power, money, privilege, intellect, guilt, and finding ways of living that are at odds with the norm, it’s a moving literary riddle with emotional drive.
At the heart of this Russian doll of a novel is a 1938 novel called Bonds. A book that’s taken New York society by storm for its account of an eccentric, ultra-wealthy couple during the age of excess – Benjamin Rusk, a socially awkward Wall Street tycoon, and Helen Rusk, a socially awkward, whip-smart woman who was born into aristocracy and becomes a philanthropic patron of the arts.
But some challenge how Bonds presents the real-life couple (Mildred and Andrew) on which the Rusk’s story was based, as Trust’s other stories reveal with tremendous dexterity when a young woman, Ida, is hired to present (a different version of) the couple’s truth. The novel culminates in an exquisitely orchestrated crescendo when we’re given access to Mildred’s journal through Ida’s attempt to sift fiction from fact.
Appropriately enough, towards the end of Trust, Mildred’s journal quotes a music-themed line by Jean Rhys: “The orchestra played Puccini and the sort of music that you always know what’s going to come next, that you can listen to ahead, as it were”. While knowing “what’s going to come next” is keenly pertinent to Mildred and Andrew’s story, this quote also riffs on the nature of Diaz’s wider novel – it is unlikely readers know what’s coming next, and that’s part of the point; deception often runs deep and lurks beneath multiple ruses.
De-shrouding truth and myths around money and the desire to acquire it, Trust is the kind of special novel that has the power to shift how we see the world.
Joanne Owen
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Hernan Diaz Press Reviews
Diaz is a narrative genius whose work easily encompasses both a grand scope and the crisp and whiplike line. Trust builds its world and characters with subtle aplomb. What a radiant, profound and moving novel -- Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
Intricate, cunning and consistently surprising . . . Diaz has the whole literary past at his fingertips . . . [an] exhilarating and intelligent novel - New York Times Book Review
A sublime, richly layered novel. A story within a story within a story. -- Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
Trust glints with wonder and knowledge and mystery. Its plotlines are as etched and surreal as Art Deco geometry, while inside that architecture are people who feel appallingly real. This novel is very classical and very original: Balzac would be proud, but so would Borges. -- Rachel Kushner, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Mars Room
A rip-roaring, razor-sharp dissection of capitalism, class, greed, and the meaning of money itself that also manages to be a dazzling feat of storytelling on its own terms . . . Uniquely brilliant . . . exhilarating . . . a novel for the ages. - Vogue
Immaculate. TRUST is a work of assured virtuosity, lightly-worn wisdom, and immense impact. -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies
That rare jewel of a book - jaw-dropping storytelling against the backdrop of beautiful writing. Amidst all the noise in the world, whole days found me curled up on the couch, lost inside Diaz's brilliance -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of Red at the Bone
A virtuoso performance . . . A spellbinding tale that illuminates the impact of money on all of our lives . . . Trust is that rare thing: a beautifully crafted novel that dares to confront some of our deepest socioeconomic schisms - Oprah Daily
Like four exquisite dioramas, Diaz has set up all of these stories with great precision to present two fundamental questions: Why do we tell stories? And at what cost are those stories told? . . . A remarkably accessible treatise on the power of fiction. This unquestionably smart and sophisticated novel not only mirrors truth, but helps us to better understand the truth. - Boston Globe
For all its elegant complexity and brilliant construction, Diaz's novel is compulsively readable . . . A captivating tour de force that will astound readers with its formal invention and contemporary relevance. -- Booklist, starred review
In this glorious puzzle of a novel, perspectives keep shifting and the wealth of one early-twentieth-century family keeps changing its origin-story. What a joy this is to read, suspenseful at every turn, the work of a rare and impressive talent. -- Joan Silber, author of Secrets of Happiness
Diaz's Trust exposes the wild power that narrative holds . . . over the economy, historiography, hierarchies, over a person's life, truth, over the reader. A powerful, sinister tale in the form of a nesting doll, around which the modern economy fashions larger and larger macho casings -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter
The audacity and scope of Hernan Diaz's extraordinary novel - a prism, a mystery, a revelation - are brilliantly matched by the quality of his prose. -- Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: American Financier
Trust speaks to matters of the most urgent significance to the present day . . . Cleverly constructed and rich in surprises, this splendid novel offers serious ideas and serious pleasures on every beautifully composed page -- Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend
Like a tower of gifts waiting to be unwrapped, Trust offers a multitude of rewards to be discovered and enjoyed . . . compelling . . . engrossing . . . a beautifully composed masterpiece - BookPage
Gripping . . . Trust is about the bigger lies we tell about capitalism and individual ability, about our society and ourselves, and about the price we are willing to pay to maintain such illusions - Vulture
This masterpiece of a book-within-a-book explores how public perception and reality can get twisted - Good Housekeeping
Wondrous . . . a kaleidoscope of capitalism run amok in the early 20th century, which also manages to deliver a biography of its irascible antihero and the many lives he disfigures during his rise to the cream of the city's crop. Grounded in history and formally ambitious, this succeeds on all fronts - Publishers Weekly
Rich and prismatic . . . Excellent - Wall Street Journal
Trust proves that Diaz is a writer of singular talent. This book is a kaleidoscopic dazzler that works as both an engrossing literary mystery and a capitalistic takedown for the ages. Don't miss it. - Chicago Review of Books
Diaz has organized his nesting-doll novel so ingeniously that the tricks merely thrum in the background as the intricate plot unfolds, following a tycoon couple forward to a novel about their history, then back and forth through diaries, recriminations and reversals. The result shouldn't be missed. - LA Times
Engrossing . . . Diaz's ingenious new fiction, told in four overlapping parts, challenges conventional story lines of another favorite American theme: capitalism and the accumulation of vast wealth. - Star Tribune
A dazzling novel about wealth, capitalism and who exactly gets to tell the story. - The Bookseller
Ingenious, thrilling . . . the novel brilliantly weaves its multiple perspectives to create a symphony of emotional effects . . . A clever and affecting high-concept novel - Kirkus, starred review
Riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed. The result is a mesmerizing metafictional alchemy of grand scope and even grander accomplishment - Esquire
An elegant, irresistible puzzle - Washington Post
A uniquely layered novel . . . Each page peels back another mystery, making for an utterly riveting read - Buzzfeed
A novel that unpeels like an onion, upending the story you first hear. The Pulitzer Prize-finalist explores wealth, power, the dynamics of American capitalism, and the nature of truth in an inventive way that stacks up to one engaging, beautiful whole - Daily Beast
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