during the Great Depression after the novel’s publication. Together, Benjamin and Helen become the most famous billionaire couple in America after a relatively swift rise to what seems to be boundless wealth.īut how did this family so flawlessly and persistently acquire and sustain this wealth while the rest of Wall Street floundered during the 1929 crash? The answer revealed in “Bonds” becomes one of the hottest topics of public speculation in the U.S. Though consumed by his work, he marries Helen, a quiet but exceptionally brilliant girl who has just experienced the psychotic demise of her father and moved from abroad to New York with her mother. “Trust” begins with a section titled “ Bonds: A Novel by Harold Vanner.” A novel within a novel, “Bonds” tells us the story of Benjamin Rask, a purportedly self-made Wall Street tycoon who comes into his greatest wealth and most marked influence in the 1920s through his mathematical genius and razor-sharp financial intuition. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail-we are ruined by forces beyond our control,” Diaz writes.

“Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. (And know I am jealous you’re about to get to read this book for the very first time.) Though there is no chance anything I write here will be able take away from any of this novel’s vivid brilliance, before proceeding, I humbly offer the reader this advice: Buy this book at your local independent bookstore as soon as you possibly can and devour it knowing nothing about it.

“Trust” is a fascinating, layered novel that builds upon itself stepwise, and I worry any discussion of it could be considered a “spoiler” by some. Important notice to the reader: before reading this review, know that I consider Hernan Diaz’s newest novel best read with no prior awareness of the novel’s structure or how it functions.

Special to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger Layered novel explores truth through multiple voices amid blaze of 1920s Wall Street

Trust book hernan diaz