Trust - Hernan Diaz

Trust is the most labyrinthine book I’ve read in a long time–gripping, mysterious, and compelling. Set in New York in the 1920s, in the opening section, we are introduced to a wildly popular fictional novel, Bonds, that tells the story of a famous Wall Street trader and his wife.

Bonds tells the story of Benjamin Rask, a successful businessman to whom trading comes naturally, who accumulates vast amounts of wealth, defying all the odds and prospering during the stock market crash of 1929. Whilst Rask’s business is thriving; we see the slow descent into madness that threatens the life of his wife, Helen.

As Bonds reaches its climax, the reader is thrust into the mid-1930s and introduced to Andrew Bevel, a wildly successful Wall Street mogul and businessman, as he hires a secretary to assist him in ensuring not a single person is ever able to read Bonds again and to tell his version of the very same story.

A tricky novel to write about without giving too much away, Trust explores the truths behind the lives of public figures and the lengths they will go to perpetuate a preferred image. Despite being written by a male author, with a narrative centred around a male protagonist, Trust is a decidely feminist–it is the women around Andrew Bevel that give us the total picture of who he truly is, rather than the person he wants people to see.

Trust is a wildly addictive, ingeniously structured novel of truth, deception, betrayal and cold hard cash that questions the very fragile nature of the economy our lives are built upon–and it’s a story that couldn’t be more timely.

Trust is out now. Purchase it from your local independent bookstore today!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Listen to a song from ThatTrack that I feel would be used to score a scene in a movie adaptation of Trust here: “I Had No Idea.” ThatTrack is a music licensing platform for content creators. You can check it out here.