Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

During the April matinée, book club members gathered to discuss Trust by Hernan Diaz, the winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. What drew the most attention was the novel’s structure. Some oenophiles found the early chapters slow, repetitious, and boring. For me, however, the book truly came alive when the narrative shifted to Ida Partenza’s story. And I found myself entirely captivated once Mildred’s journal began to ramble and resist legibility. In the spirit of Rashomon, Diaz pushes readers into a rabbit hole of ambiguity and encourages them to accept that no single account can capture the full truth. The novel becomes a layered meditation on wealth, division, authorship, power, and the erasure of women and the working class in the official narratives of financial empires. After reading it, the multiplicity of voices lingers, as do the silences surrounding gender, historical truth, moral compromise, and the fading or erasure of the history of immigrant working-class anarchists like Ida's father. His name remained anonymous - a thorough erasure. The novel gains narrative momentum when it turns to the story of Ida Partenza, the young ghostwriter, and her loving father, an aging, anonymous Italian anarchist. Ida’s father embodies a strain of early 20th-century radicalism, evoking real-life revolutionaries such as Errico Malatesta, Luigi Galleani, Carlo Tresca, and Nicola Sacco. His fierce idealism and scorn for compromise sharply contrast with the opulence and cunning of Andrew Bevel’s world—a world of polite robberies cloaked in legitimacy. Readers would not fail to notice the fault line of the ideological divide that Ida must navigate both emotionally and intellectually. Mildred, depicted under the alias Helen Rask (née Helen Brevoort), is rendered with confusion. The only thing we must note is that her private reading list included Transcendentalists like Thoreau, satirists such as Swift, and aphorists like Nietzsche and Karl Kraus—figures who emphasize personal moral clarity over public acclaim. In a world defined by acquisition and spectacle, her alignment with self-esteem and inward freedom marks her both as otherworldly and fatally out of place. Andrew Bevel, the self-styled titan of finance, appears allegedly modeled after Andrew William Mellon - a banker, industrialist, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary. Mellon Bank, a major outlet in transaction processing, provides a plausible historical analogue. Though Diaz offers Andrew a cool indictment of the myth of the financial genius, the story gradually dismantles the machinery that props up Bevel’s legend. It portrays him as both a powerful man and as a curator of his own myth—a myth built on silence, omission, and borrowed insight. The book offers a vivid portrait of the leisure class—their vicarious consumption, conspicuous charity, and their obsessive pursuit of cultural legitimacy. The nouveau riche of the Gilded Age didn’t merely donate books—they built entire libraries. They didn’t attend concerts—they hosted them in their drawing rooms. The creation of the Metropolitan Opera House itself stemmed from exclusion, a riposte to the Academy’s refusal to grant box seats to parvenu, the upstart millionaires, hilariously depicted in the HBO drama series: The Gilded Age. Amidst the backdrop of the Great Depression, while most Americans suffered unimaginable hardship, a few—Jesse Livermore, Floyd Odlum, Joseph Kennedy—turned catastrophe into windfall by shorting the market. These figures serve as silent reminders that Pluto's wealth is rarely innocent. It accumulates not only during booms, but in the wreckage of collapse—when the world burns and opportunists strike. Mildred’s invisible contribution to her husband’s empire is reminiscent of Emily Roebling, who took over the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband fell ill. Like Roebling, Mildred was the intellectual and strategic force behind the scenes. Yet her influence is effaced, her agency denied. This gendered erasure reflects the broader reality of finance, where women were virtually absent from the upper echelons of investment banking until the 1980s. One can't help but wonder why so many intelligent, beautiful women in literature are doomed to die young. From Millie in Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove to Mildred Bevel in Trust, their deaths feel less like narrative resolution and more like aesthetic sacrifice—tragedies designed to ennoble the male protagonist or deepen the story’s moral tone. While high maternal mortality rates (MMR in short) might offer a partial historical explanation, we must consider other causes such as mental illness, tuberculosis, suicide, and possibly social isolation. We are not far from there. Postscript) The trusts, or investment trusts, in the 19th and early 20th centuries were investment partnerships, essentially like buy-out funds or hedge funds in the post-WWII banking parlance. They were vehicles designed not just to grow capital, but to concentrate influence, deflect scrutiny, and more often than not, rewrite the terms of risk.

Beautifully written and often profound. A novel easier to admire than enjoy.

To me this was a good book, but not great. Well written written And enjoyable to read, we got to see a couple different perspectives on the same events and what might be considered a plot twist. But I found it a bit predictable And at least 2 of the characters cliche.

Herman Diaz's 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Trust" absorbed me from beginning to end. For several days, I was captivated -- couldn't wait to get to it. This is a rarity for me. "Trust" is largely set in the financial district of New York City in the years surrounding the Great Depression. Here is a bare-bones summary of the story. The main character is a financier and trader, Andrew Bevel, the latest, and last, of a line of traders in his family. The reclusive Bevel amasses a large fortune during the 1920s and also manages to make money during the early stages of the Depression. Bevel's wife, Mildred, is the daughter of another New York State family with wealth and with intellectual interests. While Bevel concentrates on making his fortune, Mildred promotes educational, artistic, and cultural endeavors, particularly the development of 20th Century classical music. When Mildred dies in a Swiss sanatorium, in the 1930s, Bevel carries on but is somewhat less successful than in the days with his wife. After Bevel's death and lengthy wrangling over his estate, his palatial New York City home is turned into a museum. As is pointed out through "Trust", American literature has many works about New York City, the wealthy classes, the financial markets, and the nature of capitalism. This novel brings to it subject a strong sense of perspectivism. Bevel's story is told in four voices by four individuals, each with their own distinct voice and background. Each story has commonalities, but each is also different in terms of what happened and in terms of human relationships. The reader is left to think through the stories to come to an understanding of events and people. Showing and considering different points of view is integral to the humanities, whether history, literature, or philosophy, and to this novel. "Trust" considers city life, capitalism and greed, the arts, marriage, the relationship between imagination and realism, and more within its complex structure. It is challenging and mostly effective. Each of the four storytellers are fascinating both as writers and as themselves. The first, Harold Vanner, was a minor novelist of the day who wrote a heavily fictionalized novella about the Bevels titled "Bonds". It was fascinating to get hints about Vanner through the book and to read his account. The second part, "My Life" was written by Andrew Bevel himself, with help, and tells his story from his perspective and to rebut Vanner's book. The third and longest story is "A Memoir, Remembered" by Ida Partenza. She tells her tale from the standpoint of a 70 year old successful author. Partenza had been raised in poverty in Brooklyn by her father, an anarchist. At the age of 23, Bevel had hired her to help write his Autobiography. Partenza discusses her life with her father, how she came to be hired by Bevel, and how she became fascinated by the writing project and shaped it to her own as well as to Bevel's ends. The final section of the book, "Futures" consists of diary entries by Midred during her time in the Swiss sanatorium just before her death. Midred has a different perspective on the story and on her relationship with Bevel than do the other three storytellers. The reader will be encouraged to think about the world of financial trusts and about whom to trust among the four narrators, with their differing aims and perspectives. In his "Phaedrus", Plato has Socrates say that the written word can be revealing but also narrowing in its fixity. With the many earlier literary antecedents to Diaz's novel, I was reminded most of "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer" by Steven Millhauser which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Martin Dressler is an American entrepreneur who, unlike Bevel was born to modest means. Dressler reaches the American dream of riches in New York City by founding a series of hotels before his businesses and his personal life come crashing down on his head. The story is a mix of realism and surrealism which captured something of the themes and locations of "Trust" in its own way. Unfortunately "Martin Dressler" has fallen into neglect. It deserves to be read both in it own right and as another voice on the themes of "Trust". "Trust" is a challenging, provocative novel about an aspect of the American dream and the American experience. Robin Friedman

Strange. Got lost a time or two. Not sure I understand this book. What happened? Not really aware … strange

Diaz dreams up an interesting and innovative story that follows the ups and downs of a financier family in NYC. Very enjoyable to read. Strong character development and enough unique literary flair that gives the story line depth and precociousness.

I'm surprised that I loved the book! When I first read the reviews and the summary of the book, I thought I would hate it. It's hard for me to find books that keep me interested but this was one! I like how the book is written in 4 sections as it's different to what I usually read. I will admit, the first part was a little boring due to all the talk about the stock market, but it gets better in the 3rd and 4th sections. It's confusing in the first two parts, but the 3rd part reveals a lot of twists that I loved and kept me reading!! My favorite parts happened in the third section where a lot of things start to make sense and connect to the first two parts. The last part I think is a nice way to tie everything together. Overall, I think you should give it a shot!

Trust is an unusual story told in three parts with different voices and narratives and characters. At the end of the first part there were notes as if this story was incomplete and just being developed. I found this strange. The story told of a husband and wife who were affluent in society but not social. They kept to themselves as the husband worked the stock market to accrue more wealth as his wife was a lover of music and philanthropy. Their marriage was an odd partnership with each doing what they loved to do without disturbing the other one and passing like ships in the night occasionally. I moved on to the next part and it began with a chapter one again, making it even weirder. I did not know what to make of this Pulitzer Prize winning book. I have to admit I did not want to continue since I was not sure of what I was reading. It didn’t quite come together yet. The second part was told by a man who was a prominent, affluent man who was all about making money in the stock market and how upset he was over a book that was written about his wife and him. He wanted to do all he could to stop the printing and selling of this egregious book. The third part was another voice - the voice of a woman who became this prominent man’s secretary. He hired her to write his memoirs and correct what the other book had misconstrued about his life and that of his wife’s. I found this book to be tedious at times with all the confusion that set in going from one voice to another. The writing differed greatly from each narrative. I could not give it five stars even if it was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Compra segura, entrega rápida. Excelente produto!!

I can’t see why this book was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2022 or how on earth it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023. It seems a disjointed, rambling and confusing book about money, power and relationships. But that is a lie – a trick - a bit like Hernan Diaz in this book. On the contrary I think ‘Trust’ is a dazzling cut-diamond of a book. Unlike many novels with a beginning, middle and an end, Trust is constructed like a Russian Matryoshka doll where once the smallest doll – the ‘Futures’ section of the book – is revealed all our questions are answered and we can only sit back and wonder at Diaz’s deft sleight of hand. The author uses four different genres: first is the novel within the novel, then the manuscript, followed by the memoir and finally, the diary. From the first Diaz lulls the reader into a false sense of security. “Bonds” a novel within a novel, written by Harold Vanner in a traditional style, using the third person, lacking in dialogue, tells the story of successful investor Benjamin Rask and his wife in their New York Mansion. Helen Rask was an excellent mathematician with no acceptable outlet in a patriarchal society for her brilliance. Through her philanthropy and sponsorship of artists and musicians, this otherwise reserved woman creates a social bubble in which she feels comfortable and achieves great success. The loss of this richly cultural life hit her hard after the Depression when people blamed her husband for manipulating the markets and making money from other people’s misfortune. Her descent into mental illness was swift. An uppity wife would often find herself despatched to a clinic for experimental treatment and Helen’s fate was not a one-off. The reader learns later that the fictional author, Harold Vanner, had been entirely wrong about Helen aka Mildred. He may have changed the names of the two main protagonists but he was subsequently destroyed by the “real-life” Andrew Bevel because the story was clearly about the Bevels. How shocked Vanner would have been to learn that Mildred Bevel, the de facto victim was actually the brains behind Andrew Bevel’s success. He would have been horrified that he had lost his literary livelihood for such a monumental lie – no one would have suspected that the ‘angel in the Bevel house’, Mildred Bevel, had been capable of such Machiavellian scheming and, let’s face it, shocking brilliance! ‘My Life’, the manuscript of Andrew Bevel’s autobiography, is written in the first person but the writing is more stilted, less fluent than Vanner’s novel and is peppered with copious author’s notes for further research. It eventually stutters to an unresolved end, much as Bevel’s life ended, - suddenly. Bevel employed an inexperienced secretary, Ida Partenza, to not only type up the book but also invent incidents in the life of his late wife – a woman Ida had never met. Today we would say that Ida was a ghost writer, of sorts. The interviews between her and Bevel gave her a chance to develop her obvious talent for creative writing. She had already created a false biography for herself along with a new name. This was a game she would be able to play with inexperienced enthusiasm. With her boss as the only source, writing Mildred’s truth was nigh on impossible. For example on page 286 Bevel instructed Ida as follows: “We wouldn’t want anyone to believe she was arrogant or affected. Keep it simple. Make her love of the arts approachable for the common reader”. That Mildred had sponsored and enjoyed innovative modern classical music was only one of the truths that needed to be buried. Ida realised that the Mildred she was writing about was very different from the one who had decorated her bedroom with minimalist furniture. Ida had even inserted interests and events from her own life into Mildred’s to pad out the text, so she was well aware of the lies contained within its pages. This book is set in the past but Diaz is a contemporary writer. “Trust” may well be a metaphor for the modern world – awash with lies and deepfake news. If he were alive today Andrew Bevel would no doubt have used AI, Chat GPT to write his book and social media to circulate lies about Harold Venner. For example, look at the vitriol addressed to J K Rowling. The more I think about it, the more Bevel’s pride in being able to bend and align reality so that the adjustment looks like truth, the more I read commentary about the present Age. Ida acknowledges in later life (her memoir section written in italics) that she had also been manipulated by him, that money equals power and that power is not always wielded by the most ethical people. Her naivete began to fall away with the realisation that Jack had been spying on her and her father had stolen pages from her bin. She sensed a genuine mystery around the Bevels and her love of crime novels whetted her appetite for finding out the answer to the puzzle of who Mildred really was. However, she conversely admitted that working for Bevel had set her on a solid career path, paid her a good salary, and provided her with independence and a roof over her head as well as paying for her father’s accommodation. Ida Partenza had been regularly subjected to her father’s political rantings and preoccupations until she left home. He even told her that being a Secretary was a demeaning occupation, which promised independence but was actually “another knot in the millenary subjection of women to the rule of men”, failing to recognise the hypocrisy of his words. He would eventually live alone in unhygienic squalor rather than lift a hand to do anything about it. Despite grudgingly admitting that secretarial work was work - and he admired anyone who worked - he did not seem to understand that cooking, laundry, and cleaning was house ‘work’. Ida attempted to make sense of the Bevels by writing a memoir but it was only when she discovered the hidden diary that she discovered Mildred’s truth. Mildred describes her husband, Andrew, as ‘stoically sulky’, which is not surprising as he was constantly jealous of her superior skills in successfully predicting the stock market’s movements while taking all the credit for himself. This was a dark secret Andrew Bevel was determined to take to his grave. On the other hand, Mildred felt guilty that her financial dexterity had financially ruined people. In another extract she writes: “I don’t believe in magic, but the viciousness of cancer after the crash didn’t feel like a coincidence.” In this book financial trust, trust between husband and wife or parents and children is often misplaced. Women are silenced. The men in ‘Trust’ don’t come out of it looking very good. Clearly, this book is as much about the imposed restrictive experience of being a woman as it is about making money. Living in the twenty-first century, as we do, when some people struggle to find words to describe what a woman actually is, it is a salutary reminder that we are human beings first. Despite growing up speaking Spanish and Swedish, Diaz has made no secret of his love for the English language. He writes longhand in notebooks, in English, with a Mont Blanc pen, often in the Centre for Brooklyn History library, close to his home. He is widely read and his academic background contributes to the wealth of previous reading that enriches this novel. I really didn’t want this thoughtful, elegantly-written book to end and would recommend it to others.

Un livre brillant, parfois un peu ardu mais intriguant. La révélation finale est à demi attendue, mais semble trop improbable jusqu’à ce que l’on en comprenne les détails.

Literally liked everything about this book.

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