Book Report: Trust

18. Hernan Diaz, Trust (2022) (8/18/23)

A few years ago I read Hernan Diaz's first book, In the Distance, and was blown away. It's a fascinating work of fiction about the American west, almost a tall tale, but with a nuanced footing in reality. So I was excited when he published a second book—which then went on to co-win the Pulitzer, together with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. (In the Distance was itself short-listed for the prize: not a bad track record so far.) 

Trust is very different from that first book, though both are historical fiction set in the US. Trust is told in four parts: a short novel, titled Bonds, about a New York financier and his wife; the start/rough notes of a memoir by the real-life person on whom the novel's protagonist was based; the story of the making of that memoir, by a young woman who was hired by the financier—another memoir, in fact, which also goes into her background as the daughter of an Italian anarchist; and finally, diary entries by the financier's wife, from a sanatorium in Switzerland. This woman, arguably, is at the heart of the entire book, though she is also dead throughout it.

Diaz is some writer. I really enjoyed how he played with genre, from the purplish prose of the novel to the impatience of the memoir notes, to the diary entries at the end. The third section is the longest, and it helps keep the book from becoming claustrophobic, taking a step back from the financier's household and business dealings. The Panics of 1893 and 1907 and the stock market crash of 1929 all figure in, but so do emotional yearnings (or disconnects) and displacements of various sorts. 

It's difficult to summarize this book without giving too much away. And although so much of the writing is masterful, I didn't flag any passages, so won't quote anything here. I liked this book very much—but it didn't have the same impact as his first one, which really did knock my socks off. Well, let's see what he comes up with for book #3. I'll be waiting eagerly.