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Sometimes it’s tricky to share what a book is about, or even a short sketch of the plot, because it’s unusual or would give away too much about the story. Trust is one of those books for me. It starts off with the story of a power couple in New York City in the 1920s. Benjamin Rask is a genius in finance; his younger wife is the bright daughter of aristocrats. They seemingly have it all. But then life doesn’t go as they would hope.
As it turns out, that’s the first chunk of Trust. And the story of the Rasks is just a novel everyone has read. However, it’s pretty closely based on the real lives of a Wall Street tycoon and his wife. One man is very unhappy about it. One woman, years later, is trying to figure out what parts of the story are true. Who’s the real person at the center of all the stories?
In Trust, readers are presented with a bit of a nesting doll of a book. What’s “fact” in this novel? And what is the meaning of all the layering anyway? Hernan Diaz writes about the astonishing things money can buy, but also about the costs of that kind of wealth. I found it fascinating, but it’s definitely one of the types of novels I’d like to be able to discuss with others so I can dig deeper. A surprising bonus: it’s very clean reading.
Rated: None. There are no instances of profanity, though there is one use of the name of Deity.
