Trust by Hernan Diaz
Another novel and another prize winner – I’m so obvious with my reading choices. Trust won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Literature and it’s easy to see why - it would appeal to the literati such as the Pulitzer judges and also to the wider reading public. The latter would respond to the gradual revelation of its central characters’ secrets. Whilst the literati would respond to its four different narratives that circle around the lives of Andrew Bevel, a wealthy New York businessman from the early 20th century and his enigmatic wife, Mildred. They, the literati, would lap up the book’s exploration of where truth lies in every individual’s story, whose perception can be trusted and how truth can be constructed and mis-constructed.
Obviously, as a self-proclaimed literati, I enjoyed piecing together the story from the distinct narratives although there was also plenty to enjoy in the evocation of the modern financial system with its stocks and shares, bonds and derivatives that seems divorced from the reality of real value founded on honest work. The 1929 Wall Street Crash makes an appearance and any resonance with the 2008 crash built on the sub-prime fiasco and the bad loans that were hedged and hedged is quite deliberate.
So, let me begin by setting out the book’s different threads to give you some sense of this consistently engaging novel. The first narrative strand is an extract from a best-selling novel written in the 1930s about a Benjamin Rask, the cold, calculating scion of a wealthy New York family. When his father dies in the early part of the century he redirects the family business from industry to finance and begins to create a wave in Wall Street with the seeming infallibility of his investments and stocks and shares manoeuvring. Rask is a bloodless character whose pleasure in his market successes is purely intellectual and theoretical, removed from the businesses and families who rely on a stable financial state to keep their lives on track. Even in the 1929 crash he thrives, which causes some suspicion about his methods. He and his intelligent, thoughtful wife, Helen - he chose a partner for form and ease and she chose him for independence - find themselves slightly ostracised from society as a result of his ability to always come out on top. Helen, whom he has allowed funds to support the arts, grow more distant and we end the extract with her trying to recover her mental and physical health in a Swiss sanatorium.
So far, so straightforward until we learn that this is one narrative, and a fictionalised one, about two real characters. In the second section, we receive the financier’s memoir, albeit incomplete with notes to self about ideas and events that need more detail. Fascinatingly, these notes hint at an unreliable narrator: they focus on the narrator’s wise judgement and financial market philosophy rather than the more personal side of his life. When he speaks of his wife, Mildred, the marriage is idealised and generalised - it rings hollow. His passion seems reserved for his work and the continual link he makes between his financial triumphs and the health of the country.
We are, of course, being invited to build up a picture we can trust. And the next twist in the third section is narrated by Ida Partenza, the Italian American daughter of an anarchist printer who has warned Ida all her life about the inequities and moral corruption of the country he emigrated to from fascist Italy. She is another fiercely intelligent woman, determined to make her own way in America whilst loyal to her complex, distracted single parent. She secures work for a mysterious financier, Andrew Bevel, who is writing a memoir of his life, career and marriage, as a counter to the novel we have glimpsed in the first section. He wants to put the record straight, ostensibly to protect the reputation of his beloved wife, Mildred, as well as to present free market capitalism as a force for good. Without giving too much away, as this is a book that reveals its secrets in a gradual and detached manner, Ida begins to question some of the perceptions she is being guided to record. Originally employed by Bevel to record his words, he gradually makes Ida complicit in the stories of his marriage and his wife’s illness and hands over to her responsibility for the sections about Mildred’s artistic philanthropy and inner life. Ida has to decide how far she can trust the portrait of Mildred she is bringing into fruition; and eventually she is forced to confront how much she can trust herself about the nature of the book she is writing and the type of life she wants to lead.
Who we can trust to tell the world’s stories and who actually gets to tell the authorised version is, as I’m sure you’ve picked up, central to this book’s purpose and multi-layered structure. What the duty of a novelist is to the truth is also explored. And, the trust we place in the financial institutions and the men who run them with their shifting of risk via bonds and derivatives is the context for this exploration - Diaz is reminding is that the personal and public are always intertwined. I guess all the people who vote for the Trumps of this world and Brexit showed they had learnt this lesson following the financial crash that left those already disadvantaged worse off whilst the establishment was untouched. Those who have turned to populist solutions may have made bad choices but the analysis and instincts that led to those choices seem sound.
This book does, however, eventually point out that whilst the nature of truth and who or what to trust can be complex, there are some facts out there that can’t be denied. This is revealed in the powerful, final narrative that quietly and powerfully modifies and undermines much of what was uncovered in the earlier sections. This final story, which I won’t say any more about, has much of the satisfaction of a whodunit denouement mixed with an uneasy sense of frustration and sadness.
I can heartily recommend this book. Trust me, it is a thought provoking and consistently engaging read.