Book Review: Trust, by Hernan Diaz

Kicking off a bunch of short essays about what I'm reading this month

It’s Summer. I’m traveling on vacation. That means time to read a wider variety of book-length things, which result in some posts about what I like or don’t like about what I’m reading.

Usually I aim for finance or money-themed books to review. I will probably slip in a few non-finance books, just for variety, over the next few weeks. A man cannot survive on finance books alone.

This first one, however, is in fact finance-themed. I just finished Hernan Diaz’ 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning Trust two days ago.

The main action of the text takes place is the Roaring Twenties, the Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression, in New York City. The central characters are an ultra-successful financier and his preternaturally gifted wife. But more than financial history, however, Trust employs a particular fiction style that, it turns out, I love.

This is a novel in which we read an original fictional text. Then we encounter a layer of “unreliable narrator,” followed by a further layer of interpretation of the fictional text, attempting to sort out what is “real.” This style, I recently learned, can be called “meta-fiction” or “embedded narrative.”

Thirty years ago I read two of my all-time favorites Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov and Possession by A. S. Byatt, both of which are absolute top twenty all-timers for me. Both are classic meta-fictions.

Best meta-fiction of all time

Pale Fire is a banger. Incredibly immersive.¹

The other one, Possession, has also never left me. Do yourself a favor and read it, if you’re similarly-intrigued by the meta-fiction concept.

So much fun

A third novel I read two years ago - S, by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams uses these elements in the most creative fictional book structure I’ve ever encountered.²

I give the book S by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams an A+ for creative structure but merely a B for literary merit

Before reading Trust I hadn’t put together in my own mind that this is a fictional style that I really enjoy.

Much of my love for Trust - beyond the fact that it’s a financial history novel - comes from its structure. An original historic text, an unreliable narrator, and then attempting to sort out what is real versus what is fiction.