Will I love Trust?

I love a good look at class realities from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.

So I was eager to dive into a book about Trust’s central character, Ida Partenza, the daughter of an early twentieth-century anarchist, but also the secretary and ghostwriter for wealthy financier Andrew Bevel.

Part of what is so captivating (and mind-boggling) about Trust is its metafictional structure: Is it a novel? Wait, is it a memoir? Wait, is it Bevel’s story, or Ida’s, or Bevel’s wife’s?

To say more, I’m afraid, would ruin too many wonderful surprises, but I will say that some of the… show more.

I loved the different perspectives the author created to shine light onto the main characters. Focused on success and individualism during the 20th century, the novel twists and turns events, timelines and interpretations, very much like a mystery with an eluding plot, that keeps changing as new information is shown to the reader, through voices of different witnesses.

The ending is unexpected. More questions are left hanging, as the action progresses, the reader is challenged to draw conclusions or to seek even further between the inconsistencies of overlapping destinies.

The strong female characters and the multiple faces of winning in… show more.

Trust is such an amazing novel because it is divided into four sections, each narrated by a different character. All four narrators relate a story that has the same characters and setting, but is told from a different perspective.

With every section, the reader feels they have finally arrived at the definitive truth of the story. No, the next section, unbelievably, flips the whole picture upside down. And that keeps happening! 

Also, the book is set in New York City in the first half of the twentieth century, and the author skillfully portrays that world with delicious details.

This book is a work of fiction, but it lulls and twists you until you’re dizzy with reality. We love it because it brilliantly puts you through the same series of events but from a different character's perspective each time.

This is design–never forgetting that your lens is but one of many on the events in the surrounding world. And if you think reading fiction isn’t a great way to learn to design, stop thinking and start reading. Fiction is the ultimate tool for imagination.

I believe in reading across genres and that including poetry and fiction in my daily routine impacts the rhythm, cadence, and freedom of my memoirs.

This book was a fictional game changer and confidence booster as Dias was doing what I was trying to do in my true crime investigation—bringing together the forces of history, business, and personality in a page-turning story. Dias plaits together the lives of a Wall Street tycoon and the daughter of unconventional elites in New York City whose stories intersect across a full century, with profound implications for the meaning of power, wealth, and legacy.

… show more.

I struggled to add this book to the list because I believe there is a fatal flaw in the plot. However, the ingenuity and creativity of the author compelled me to include it.

The book contains a novel within a novel, a concept I had never experienced before and found interesting. The story revolves around the success of a man, achieved due to the contributions made by his wife. The man finds it difficult to attribute his success to another person and feels guilty about hiding it from the world.

This tension of honoring the self while recognizing the other… show more.

From the first time I read The Great Gatsby, I’ve loved dark variations on The American Dream.

I began Trust expecting a straightforward tale of a dramatic rise and fall in New York’s circles of financial power, and Diaz’s captivating opening section bore out many of my expectations. Then, as though the book were a snake shedding its old skin, an altered but kindred narrative emerged from the first—and then another—and then another.

Add sharply etched, quirky, and multifaceted characters, and you have a succinct masterpiece I wished were twice as long. Although it’s set in the last century, Trust… show more.

First of all, I love the idea of trust, the challenge of trust, the multiple meanings of the word “trust” and this book speaks to the various meanings on multiple levels. That intrigued me from the start.

Second, I love that it’s a novel about business and investing – two topics famous for being very dry and boring, but certainly not in the hands of this talented author.

I love business, I am learning to love investing and it seems unusual to find a really good novel centered around these topics. But it's not just a novel – it’s a… show more.

I knew going in that Trust was a co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer, so I was going to give it a chance. But for a long time, I found myself asking, “Why did this win the Pulitzer?”

However, six and a half hours in (that’s a long time!), it all started to make sense, and I realized that this really is a tour de force kind of book (what a compelling ending!). But fair warning, you really have to stick with it.

I hate to say much more than that because almost any description will involve spoilers due to… show more.

I guess I was in history mode this last year [revisiting the sins of the past, perhaps. This novel, which takes place at the turn of the 20th century, focuses on a fictional titan of the financial world and his impact on the economy and the culture, as well as his mysterious marriage.

Diaz also writes prose that brings another world to life, and so, for me, another master class. The structure of the novel – four parts, four different voices, all retelling the story from another angle – is particularly impressive. Something like the Japanese Rashomon – examining a… show more.