Trust

I struggled to add this book to the list because I believe there is a fatal flaw in the plot. However, the ingenuity and creativity of the author compelled me to include it.

The book contains a novel within a novel, a concept I had never experienced before and found interesting. The story revolves around the success of a man, achieved due to the contributions made by his wife. The man finds it difficult to attribute his success to another person and feels guilty about hiding it from the world.

This tension of honoring the self while recognizing the other… show more.

From the first time I read The Great Gatsby, I’ve loved dark variations on The American Dream.

I began Trust expecting a straightforward tale of a dramatic rise and fall in New York’s circles of financial power, and Diaz’s captivating opening section bore out many of my expectations. Then, as though the book were a snake shedding its old skin, an altered but kindred narrative emerged from the first—and then another—and then another.

Add sharply etched, quirky, and multifaceted characters, and you have a succinct masterpiece I wished were twice as long. Although it’s set in the last century, Trust… show more.

First of all, I love the idea of trust, the challenge of trust, the multiple meanings of the word “trust” and this book speaks to the various meanings on multiple levels. That intrigued me from the start.

Second, I love that it’s a novel about business and investing – two topics famous for being very dry and boring, but certainly not in the hands of this talented author.

I love business, I am learning to love investing and it seems unusual to find a really good novel centered around these topics. But it's not just a novel – it’s a… show more.

I knew going in that Trust was a co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer, so I was going to give it a chance. But for a long time, I found myself asking, “Why did this win the Pulitzer?”

However, six and a half hours in (that’s a long time!), it all started to make sense, and I realized that this really is a tour de force kind of book (what a compelling ending!). But fair warning, you really have to stick with it.

I hate to say much more than that because almost any description will involve spoilers due to… show more.

I guess I was in history mode this last year [revisiting the sins of the past, perhaps. This novel, which takes place at the turn of the 20th century, focuses on a fictional titan of the financial world and his impact on the economy and the culture, as well as his mysterious marriage.

Diaz also writes prose that brings another world to life, and so, for me, another master class. The structure of the novel – four parts, four different voices, all retelling the story from another angle – is particularly impressive. Something like the Japanese Rashomon – examining a… show more.

While I am not often a fan of post-modernist tricks in fiction, this book(s) within a book is not only clever, it’s a brain stimulant. A novel? An autobiography, clearly as an unfinished draft? A memoir? How does that make a book?

On first read, one is unsure of one’s footing, but the landscape does settle, bit by bit. The writing styles in the individual sections are brilliant parodies of both genre and personality.

As one proceeds, the connections between the different stories begin to emerge. Liars all? For me, it was not so much the story of Andrew Bevel… show more.

I was completely captivated by the characters in the first part of the novel.

There are four interlocked narratives in Trust; each one deepened and changed how I related to the married couple in the first narrative—so I couldn’t stop reading.

The writing is beautiful. The characters are lovingly drawn, whether they’re from the 1920s or the 1970s. There’s also a lot of American history in the book, which I gobbled up. And the ending is a poignant and marvelous twist on the themes of love and trust. A powerful, compelling novel!

Although the book is ostensibly about making money, the real focus is marriage, intimacy, and male-female relations. The part that struck me was the way the male author so sensitively conveys the female side of the story.

The novel has three parts, seemingly telling the story of two couples but really relating three versions of the same story. The central issue is male ego where the husband downplays the wife’s role in his successes so he can get more credit. In one case the wife assumes a secondary position by choice, while in another he actively erases her role in… show more.

I set out to expand my horizons by reading a possibly-boring historical novel about a filthy-rich financier in the era of robber barons, but wow, this turned out to be full of surprises.

It begins with a novella-within-the-novel by an “author” from the 1920s, continues with a “memoir” by someone suspiciously similar to the protagonist of the novella, concludes with diary entries from someone else entirely, and it took me nearly the whole book to figure out what exactly I was reading.

I loved the up-ending expectations, writing that echoed other times and places, and the final revelation that I… show more.