Yes, I Liked: Trust

Literary Fiction #101

Okay, okay, OKAY, accountability bunnies, it’s true that I said this week would start listing my top books of the year. I mean, we have but 27 days until 2023, zomg, so like, let’s get some hitch in this year-end giddy-up, right?

But then this week I read Trust and I am simply compelled to Talk About It with you. So all plans are off! Changing direction on the fly! Like the World Cup commentators keep saying, “create chaos in any way possible!”

OK, so, Trust is one of those books where the fewer specifics you have going in, the better, but here goes: it’s written in four parts, starting with a relatively straightforward novella about the rise of early 20th century financier Benjamin Rask, his marriage to wife Helen, and her death. That’s followed by the subsequent three sections of notes, memories, drafts and journals from Wall Street Tycoon Andrew Bevel, his secretary Ida Partenza, and his wife Mildred. Taken all together, each section causes us to rethink not only what we just read, but who is to be believed throughout the book. It’s a literary puzzle!

And ultimately, that’s why Trust is so strong - it challenges us to consider how narratives are revised and reformed; whose voices are included, amended or omitted; and how who writes the history controls the so-called “truth” of an event. I know this summary sounds a petite bit heady and complicated, but all these concepts are packaged in a deliciously incisive, compelling way that peels back the onion layers on some of the Great American Dreams.

On the one hand, this is a clever skewering of the “Great Man” trope in which our One Noble Man acquires staggering fortune and notoriety thanks solely to his unparalleled wits and prodigious work ethic. It’s no new territory to ask “who’s behind every great man and his story,” but the book is a fresh spin on how legacy is created, how it’s capitalized, and how it’s remembered. About who gets deliberately erased or overlooked, and about the complicated relationships of power and influence between men and women.

And beyond the individual, Trust confronts the concept of wealth and how its accumulation is in itself a fiction that we all participate in. It’s not particularly subtle in doing so: e.g. there are a lot of plays on “trust” and “bonds” as both relational concepts and financial vehicles, but it’s smart, effective, and entertaining in pointing out how easily wealth corrupts and extracts, how readily we justify it to each other and to ourselves, and how finance is as much art as it is science. As one self-proclaimed anarchist character says about financiers: “that’s what all these criminals trade in: fictions.” Basically, it’s a little bit like The Great Gatsby meets Fates and Furies with the teeny tiniest dash of Succession and honestly, should I not have just said that and dropped the mic? ARE YOU NOT YET INTRIGUED?

Really, all of this would be worth reading on its own and then you add in the last layer of how the book is crafted - which really skillfully presents four distinct, realized voices and perspectives - and also the slippery question of writing itself. Meaning, if writing itself is a kind of pact with the reader, what happens when readers are deliberately misled? Can we believe any writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, as “the truth?” I know - books about books, it’s so meta, as the theater kids said in college. Some of these questions are left open in Trust but in the best way. Yes, (spoiler alert for next week?), it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. If you’ve read it, please leave a comment and tell me what you thought!

Remember, Kerry’s Gentle Lamb Scale (tm) (not really) doesn’t tell you how good the book is, but how gentle it will be for your tender readerly heart. Learn more here.

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Still Moar Best Books of the Year

Geez, it’s like all the newspapers plan to read no books in the month of December, with all these lists coming out now. Is December when they catch up on all their light fiction? Anyway:

• Washington Post doesn’t have time for 100 books of the year - they’re giving top ten only. (Including Trust! Way to bandwagon, WaPo.)

• NPR/Maureen Corrigan’s top 10 of the year (ditto)

• J’accuse: I see Young Mungo on every list but don’t know a single solitary soul who’s read it. Are there some kind of payola shenanigans happening?!?

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Ahoy There, New Mateys!

If you’re new here this week, there are a few things you should know:

• Hi! Hello! Bonjour! Thanks for being here!

• Every week is a different genre or theme, so if this week’s literary fiction selection wasn’t the elf on your particular shelf, just stay tuned. You can also check the archive to find something more to your liking, from beach reads to investigative non-fiction to fantasy & sci fi without the macho BS.

• All links above go to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores, and that is a mitzvah and a holiday gift, I think. You can see most of my past recs here. If you did buy from one of these links I would theoretically get a very small affiliate fee but honestly this never happens. I just have a cellular-level need to confess things.

• Please leave a comment or share with a friend! Because really, all I want to do is talk books. Well, and chat brightly to dogs I meet. (Hi, Oso!)

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