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Trust
By Hernan Diaz
Published Riverhead, 9780593420324, May 2023, 416 pp.

The Short of It:

What happens when money can’t buy the perfect life?

The Rest of It:

Trust is a novel made up of four competing narratives:

The book opens with BONDS, a novel by Harold Vanner. The story of Wall Street financier Benjamin Rask and his wife, Helen. Rich beyond means, but dealing with Helen’s declining health and her descent into madness.
MY LIFE, a memoir by Andrew Bevel. This is Bevel’s attempt to correct the horrible fictionalization of his life in BONDS. It’s never completed and fails to hit the mark.
IDA’S MEMOIR, is the memoir that results from Ida’s story. Ida is the ghostwriter hired by Bevel to help him pen his memoir.
MILDRED’S JOURNAL is comprised of her personal papers detailing her life with Andrew and ultimately, what we know of her final days.

This was a fascinating read. The transitions between each story was a little jarring at first, until you get the hang of what is happening. I read this on my Kindle and at first, I thought my ebook copy was possibly corrupted but then it all began to make sense.

I have to say, I was pretty enthralled with Benjamin and Helen Rask. They lived quite the life of affluence. Parties, concerts, social circles and Helen’s philanthropy. I was very invested in their story, especially when Helen falls ill and descends into possible madness. BUT, this is the fictionalized story that Vanner absolutely hated!! So much so that he purchased the publishing house that put the book out and bought every copy to get it off the shelves. BONDS has dashes of GATSBY, in my opinion.

Bevel is quite the oddity. Somewhat brilliant as a financier but without possessing any tangible talent. Financial matters just seem to go his way. His desire to correct Vanner’s work leads him to hire a ghostwriter, Ida. This part of the story is really interesting. The hiring process gives us a window into Bevel’s life and Ida’s own memoir highlighting the experience gives us her unfettered opinion of Bevel himself.

The author gives us all of these female characters in various stages of realization and dare I say it, enlightenment. Historically, women didn’t play a large role in the world of finance, or did they? As the reader, you are tasked with putting all these stories together to find the real truth.

Was Bevel as devoted to his wife Mildred as he wants us to believe? Was Mildred really “too far gone” in her descent into illness or was she well aware of the goings on around her? Mental illness or some other ailment? Once you get to her journal, it’s not clear because it is after all HER point of view and she clearly writes from a medicated haze of awareness.

Who can you believe? What story is real?

I picked this for my club’s February read and I am really glad I did. It was pretty readable even with the different formats, but more than that, I was intrigued. I wanted to know more about these people and the search for truth, a somewhat elusive thing, was entertaining. I liked how the author didn’t really lead the reader by the hand, he sort of puts it all out there for you to interpret. I liked that the story could be considered from many different angles.

Trust won the Pulitzer for fiction, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022 and made Obama’s list of fave reads for 2022. I really enjoyed Diaz’s writing and can’t wait for his next work. Trust is also being adapted into a series for HBO by Kate Winslet.

Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

The Brothers Karamazov
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Liveright Publishing, 9781324095101, May 2024, 928 pp.

The Short of It:

Immensely entertaining. Not what you’d expect.

The Rest of It:

Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his sons–the eponymous brothers Karamazov–and lead to his violent murder. ~ Bookshop.org

This review is going to be very different from my others.

Three brothers:

Dmitri Karamazov – The eldest, dramatic
Ivan Karamazov – The middle brother, brilliant
Alexei (Aloysha) Karamazov – The youngest, a novice monk

One nasty father:

Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. a difficult sort

The Women:

Katerina Ivanovna, Dmitri’s abandoned fiancée
Grushenka, a fiery pistol of a woman and the object of desire for many

The murder:

Not a spoiler but Fyodor, the father makes some horrendous decisions and pits his two sons against one another. Dimitri and Ivan and their on-again, off-again admiration for these two women, Katerina and Grushenka, create the ongoing conflict throughout the novel that keeps the pages turning. At 928 pages, this is a good thing.

Money, also plays a huge role. Dmitri is often without any. He borrows and borrows from both his father and Katerina and finds himself begging for a handout wherever he can get one.

Ivan, not always in town, happens to spend some time with the “fam” and it just gets more complex from there.

Alexei (Aloysha), is a novice monk, truly a good soul trying to always make the best of things and doing his best to do damage control between his brothers and his father.

Eventually, all the action culminates into Fyodor’s murder. Who did it? It seems as if Dimitri did the deed. Especially since money has gone missing and there is supposedly a witness to him leaving the house.

The witness though, is unreliable and possibly Fyodor’s illegitimate son and servant. That’s right, Fyodor keeps Smerdyakov in his home but not as his son, but as his servant. So the motive is there. Could he have killed Fyodor?

There is a lot of drama between the women as they call each other beasts and monsters! Jealousy unlike anything you’ve seen. They both want what they can’t have. Their loyalties are all over the place. I wanted to slap them a few times.

The murder is tried in court. The lead-up to the court case is riveting. Dmitri is arrested and taken in. Ivan and Aloysha wring their hands over the entire thing. What can be done? It’s not looking good for Dmitri and honestly, he’s not helping his case with all of the romantic dramatics that follow along with his reputation for being a deadbeat. Would he kill his father for a lousy 3000 roubles?

The family story goes a little bit sideways at the introduction of a bullied schoolboy, Ilyusha. Aloysha encounters him one day as he is walking about town. The town boys are taunting him and Aloysha steps in to defend him. Aloysha’s brother insults Ilyusha’s father and the boy bites Aloysha in retaliation. Not long afterward, Ilyusha falls deathly ill.

Without spoilers, the ending of the book is interesting. It’s not cut and dry and much is left to the reader’s own interpretation but the final pages are quite lovely. Overall, I enjoyed this romp through a classic that has long been on my list of must reads.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

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