Historical Fiction · ThoughtfulA 1920s New York financier and his wife, in four conflicting accounts of their marriage
Trust
by Hernan Diaz
A famous financier and his wife, and the competing versions of their marriage
In 1920s New York, a legendary Wall Street tycoon marries the brilliant daughter of impoverished aristocrats, and their marriage fuels gossip and social ascent. Their story is retold in Bonds, a 1938 novel that many New Yorkers have read, but it is not the only version. Hernán Díaz sets these accounts against one another and against an outsider's view, and the reader hunts for the truth in a story about how money warps reality and how power bends the facts.
More about this book
Who
Benjamin Rask, a prosperous American financier from a family of merchants turned financiers, and Helen, a much younger prodigy who has spent most of her life in Europe. They marry. They are not in love, but they share mutual respect.
World
Mostly New York City, in the world of finance, in the early twentieth century and through the 1929 Wall Street crash.
What makes it different
The novel is made of four texts: Bonds, a novel within the novel; My Life, an unfinished autobiography; A Memoir, Remembered; and Futures, a diary. They deal with many of the same people, but what they say often cannot all be true, so the reader has to decide what to believe. Díaz began with a wish to write about extreme wealth and capital.
Feel
Metafictional and fragmentary. It was a co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, won the 2022 Kirkus Prize and was longlisted for the Booker Prize.