Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, Trust by US novelist Hernan Diaz is published on this side of the pond in the wake of profusive critical acclaim. Destined to become one of the great novels of our time, this ingenious work more than lives up to the hype. A literary conundrum, composed of four books in one, this surprising, engrossing and beautifully executed novel confirms Diaz’s status as a virtuoso of storytelling.
The four overlapping sections of Trust offer different versions of the life of 1920s New York financier and Wall Street legend, Benjamin Rask. One account is told in the form of a novel within the novel, Bonds, that in this fictional scenario has become a publishing sensation in its own right.
The competing narratives across the four streams interrogate fact vs fiction, as the narrator desperately tries to extract the truth from the murky manipulations of the affluent elite. Each evolution is a revelation that deepens the reading experience without any inertia creeping in. The result is a novel that spans the entirety of the 20th century, provoking the reader to confront the deceptions in society that sustain us. Who and what we can trust within the complex morality structures of a capitalist world is examined on both a micro and a macro level to great effect.
The grand design of Trust is purposefully constructed so the very foundations of the work itself cannot be trusted – the unreliable narrator as a device has found its ultimate expression here by Diaz. As such, one of the greatest strengths of this novel is its pleasing unpredictability which guarantees the reader an exhilarating experience.
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Despite its stylistic trickery, however, the novel never succumbs to any sense of gimmick. At the heart of this searing examination of capitalism, class and wealth is a fundamental question about the power of storytelling and meaning of fiction. This soulful quest is what elevates Truth from a cold anti-capitalist meditation on mercenary greed and sordid influence, to something that speaks to the heart of humanity. Diaz has accomplished that rare thing – a literary page-turner that offers compulsive reading with exquisite prose. Having already been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his debut, Trust firmly establishes Diaz as one of the great American authors working today.
