February 5th, 2023

1. What is the book? 

          Trust

2. Who wrote it?

          Hernan Diaz

3. What is it about?

          It is a novel in four parts, with four different narrative voices, about capitalist pursuits in the United States by a fictional
          tycoon from the late-19th into the mid-20th centuries.

4. Why did I read it?

          This one I picked up by chance. The subject matter doesn’t usually interest me, but the fact that it tells overlapping
          stories from different perspectives got me intrigued. 

5. What do I think?

          As the novel unfolds from different perspectives, what comes to my mind is Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece,
          Citizen Kane. The movie centers on Charles Foster Kane, who is a thinly veiled avatar of actual media tycoon William
          Randolph Hearst. When Welles made Citizen Kane, Hearst was not happy and came very close to silencing it before it
          arrived at movie theaters. In Trust, art does imitate life.

          Another piece Diaz is in conversation with is the article by scholar Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In that
          article, Spivak posits that if the lowest class members of society want to represent themselves or be heard, it comes at a
          drastic and shocking price. The true center of Trust is one such character.

           Diaz’s novel does not end in typical fashion, and for me this is the redeeming quality of Trust. It poses the question
          “What if?” What is the greater story of this country’s moguls if all the people who contributed to their lives had a voice?
          Another question, perhaps mine, is what sacrifice must the supporting cast, as it were, make in order to be afforded their
          opportunity to speak?

You can place a hold on your copy of the book by clicking on the cover below: