Riverhead | Book Chatter

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 Mothers
By Brit Bennett
Riverhead, 9780399184529, 2017, 304pp.

The Short of It:

Rich and full bodied. Like a fine wine but better.

The Rest of It:

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it’s not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance–and the subsequent cover-up–will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. ~ From the publisher

I have had this book on my TBR list since reading The Vanishing Half. But it wasn’t until I listened to a podcast by From the Front Porch, that I really took note of The Mothers. This book has everything. Nadia is beautiful and flawed and caught in a world of hurt over her own mother’s suicide. Although she comes from a very religious family, and attends church on a regular basis, she doesn’t make the best choices when it comes to love and friendship.

Nadia navigates life in a precarious way. She is her father’s daughter, loyal to a point but when he chooses to remove the memory of her mother from her childhood home, she strikes out in ways that can only come from pain. Her deep need for belonging leads her to Luke but her relationship with Luke is complicated by life. Life, in the form of an unwanted pregnancy.

What does it mean to love and be loved? How does that look for you or me? Nadia’s definition of love swings from one extreme to another and yet she is wise beyond her young years, intelligent and driven. I won’t lie, there were times when I wanted to slap some sense into that girl but at the same time I wanted to just hold her.

The BEST part of this novel is the group of church ladies who function as a Greek chorus of sorts. Always chiming in, providing additional information and once or twice providing nothing but fodder to chew on. I did not grow up with a lot of women around me, I would have loved to have this group of women looking out for me. Nadia sees the value to knowing them, but also knows when to pull away.

This was an incredibly satisfying read. Anyone would be hard-pressed to not relate to Nadia in some way. Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…