Trust: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

A very enchanting novel. Twists and turns, sharp or subtle, jarring or smooth, happy or sad, handled very well by a talented author. A wordsmith. The structure of the novel, intriguing throughout, weaves a memorable tale, one would wish to read over and over. Super charectization. Like the journal in the novel, would the narrative would be haunting long after reading the novel.

A book with one unreliable narrator is good. Two is great. Four is Pulitzer Award.The twenties are a-roaring. Money is a-dripping. Great Depression is a-coming. And just when you start getting comfortable with the text, a 100 pages in, bam!, a new narrative, a new writing style.The book is divided into four parts. Each telling a different version of a story of a Wall Street businessman and his wife in the years leading up to the Great Depression, and after.All four books have a very distinct writing style and clearly have their own different purpose.It’s hard to imagine what is Diaz’s actual writing style without having read any of his previous works. For example Part one, though claimed to be a bestseller, hardly reads like one. The narrator is distant enough from his characters that it reads like a college essay on an Ayn Rand book. I guess it’s on purpose. A dry portrayal of a drab financier. Still fun!Must be a task for Diaz to write as four writers. Kudos.Capitalism is worshipped. The book views “capital as an antiseptically living thing. It moves, eats, grows, breeds, falls ill and may die. But it is clean. The larger the operation, the further removed he was from its concrete details.”And then there is gaslighting. So much gaslighting, and manipulation. Real life events being manipulated to serve a best selling book. And to serve a holier than thou portrait of a family. And to keep intelligence of the wife being a secret.In the end, I still don’t know who to trust (get it? get it?) Have I uncovered the truth? Was it right to sympathize with that tycoon, or he just took advantage of the situation. The journal entries? But Mildred wasn’t of sound mind. Could those be just her fantasy? These competing narratives show how gullible I am.I enjoyed this book. “Money. What is money?” he would mutter to himself. “Commodities in a purely fantastic form.”

After seeing online rev and recommendations from Instagrammers, I bought this one, and picked it up after not laying my TBR very long. The story is of a business tycoon of Wall Street and his wife in the background of great American depression and rise following the same and among 4 different takes on the same story will the reader choose from. It transpired to me only after 200 odf pages that the storyline is coherent to the display of opulence described before that. Undeniably tha narration style is not like anything I read before. Reader like me generally succumbs to fiction rather than reality will find last account unclear in some sense and will cling to 1st or 3rd version of the story. However, I expected the climax (if you call it) a bit more surprising and authentic than it was, but failed. Recommend for avid fiction fans.

The story happens during the great depression. Fictious story about how the wall street crashed. The story has unique romance, intelligence, twists and turns and written in classical style that is enjoyable to read.

Great characters, great book, good pacing, book divided into 45+ chapters and that makes for an easy read. It is divided in to 4 books. Somehow they are all interconnected. It took me 2 days to finish. Worth your time. Great use of English.

4.5⭐This story comprises of four books or parts. The first book is “Bonds” by Harold Vanner and it tells the story about Benjamin and Helena Rask, a famous rich couple in the New York City in the 1920s. He is a legendary tycoon and she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together they have unmeasurable wealth. But there are gossips about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helena’s reclusiveness.The rest of the books/parts also revolve around the first book, “Bonds”.This was a very unique book in my opinion. I don’t think I have read any “book within a book” before and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.After reading the first two books I was not even sure what was going on and was starting to dislike this book. But the tables turned after the third part. I think the third part is the best and strongest part about this book which makes reading this book worthwhile. This third part brings all the four parts of this book together and I loved how interwoven all the parts were.I can see why this book was longlisted for the Booker Prize. And I don’t want to say more about this book because I think it’s best if you go into this book not knowing much like I did.I would mention one thing that there’s a lot of discussion about finance and stock market and I did not like reading those parts. However, by the end of the book I completely understood why those were described in such details and I think they are crucial to the overall story.I would highly highly recommend this book! It is a multilayered story with a unique format and an elegant writing style. This is a brilliant book in my opinion.

Realised too late that it is really boring and disjointed at best

Nothing to write home about. This book was a waste of time and effort. I expected better from a prize winning book. I gave it three stars since the approach And presentation was somewhat novel

It is a well written and intuitive book and well worth the read.

Herman Diaz's 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Trust" absorbed me from beginning to end. For several days, I was captivated -- couldn't wait to get to it. This is a rarity for me. "Trust" is largely set in the financial district of New York City in the years surrounding the Great Depression.Here is a bare-bones summary of the story. The main character is a financier and trader, Andrew Bevel, the latest, and last, of a line of traders in his family. The reclusive Bevel amasses a large fortune during the 1920s and also manages to make money during the early stages of the Depression. Bevel's wife, Mildred, is the daughter of another New York State family with wealth and with intellectual interests. While Bevel concentrates on making his fortune, Mildred promotes educational, artistic, and cultural endeavors, particularly the development of 20th Century classical music. When Mildred dies in a Swiss sanatorium, in the 1930s, Bevel carries on but is somewhat less successful than in the days with his wife. After Bevel's death and lengthy wrangling over his estate, his palatial New York City home is turned into a museum.As is pointed out through "Trust", American literature has many works about New York City, the wealthy classes, the financial markets, and the nature of capitalism. This novel brings to it subject a strong sense of perspectivism. Bevel's story is told in four voices by four individuals, each with their own distinct voice and background. Each story has commonalities, but each is also different in terms of what happened and in terms of human relationships. The reader is left to think through the stories to come to an understanding of events and people. Showing and considering different points of view is integral to the humanities, whether history, literature, or philosophy, and to this novel. "Trust" considers city life, capitalism and greed, the arts, marriage, the relationship between imagination and realism, and more within its complex structure. It is challenging and mostly effective.Each of the four storytellers are fascinating both as writers and as themselves. The first, Harold Vanner, was a minor novelist of the day who wrote a heavily fictionalized novella about the Bevels titled "Bonds". It was fascinating to get hints about Vanner through the book and to read his account. The second part, "My Life" was written by Andrew Bevel himself, with help, and tells his story from his perspective and to rebut Vanner's book.The third and longest story is "A Memoir, Remembered" by Ida Partenza. She tells her tale from the standpoint of a 70 year old successful author. Partenza had been raised in poverty in Brooklyn by her father, an anarchist. At the age of 23, Bevel had hired her to help write his Autobiography. Partenza discusses her life with her father, how she came to be hired by Bevel, and how she became fascinated by the writing project and shaped it to her own as well as to Bevel's ends. The final section of the book, "Futures" consists of diary entries by Midred during her time in the Swiss sanatorium just before her death. Midred has a different perspective on the story and on her relationship with Bevel than do the other three storytellers.The reader will be encouraged to think about the world of financial trusts and about whom to trust among the four narrators, with their differing aims and perspectives. In his "Phaedrus", Plato has Socrates say that the written word can be revealing but also narrowing in its fixity.With the many earlier literary antecedents to Diaz's novel, I was reminded most of "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer" by Steven Millhauser which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Martin Dressler is an American entrepreneur who, unlike Bevel was born to modest means. Dressler reaches the American dream of riches in New York City by founding a series of hotels before his businesses and his personal life come crashing down on his head. The story is a mix of realism and surrealism which captured something of the themes and locations of "Trust" in its own way. Unfortunately "Martin Dressler" has fallen into neglect. It deserves to be read both in it own right and as another voice on the themes of "Trust"."Trust" is a challenging, provocative novel about an aspect of the American dream and the American experience.Robin Friedman

Interesting and amazing at the same time.I decided to read the english version and the prose was superb.Once you finish reading, it is obvious why Hernan Diaz won the Pulitzer Price!

Very good book!

The various parts of this book are written in different styles. The authorial voice changes completely—an incredibly skilful piece of work.