Trust: A Novel
By Emily Henry
October 10th, 2023
Pulitzer Prize finalist Diaz (In the Distance, 2017), returns with a multilayered novel that pieces together a searing portrait of a New York financial elite during the early-twentieth-century world through four discrete documents. The first is a novel written by Harold Vanner about the reluctant scion of a tobacco empire, Benjamin Rask, an inept athlete, an apathetic clubman, an unenthusiastic drinker, an indifferent gambler, a lukewarm lover. The second is a partial memoir written by Andrew Bevel, a New York financier with a clear resemblance to the character in Vanner’s novel, who seeks retribution for Vanner’s fictionalization of his life. The third piece presents the memoirs of Ida Partenze, a journalist turned accomplice to Bevel’s ambitions to ruin Vanner, who also seeks to undermine Bevel’s marriage. The final section delivers the journal entries of Mildred, Bevel’s wife, adding yet another facet to the stories-within-stories. For all its elegant complexity and brilliant construction, Diaz’s novel is compulsively readable, and despite taking place in the early 1900s, the plot reads like an indictment of the start of the twenty-first century with its obsession with obscure financial instruments and unhinged capital accumulation. A captivating tour de force that will astound readers with its formal invention and contemporary relevance. -(Booklist starred review)
This book discussion program is HYBRID. We will meet in the library but you may also attend via Zoom. Email Mike at mike.morris@thehowe.org for an invitation or more information.
Where: Howe Library & Zoom
Room: Murray Room
When: 12:00pm-1:00pm
