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Trust
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth--all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz's Trust elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another--and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
These book club discussion questions were written by Bookclubs staff.
Book club questions for Trust by Hernan Diaz
Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.
Diaz plays with the way that certain financial terms also have meaning in everyday language. Discuss the use of the financial terms “Trust,” “Bonds,” and “Futures” as the title of the novel and its first and last parts. Why do you think the author chose to use these terms as his titles?
Trust is written in four parts – a novel-within-a-novel, an unfinished autobiography, a memoir, and a diary. Why do you think the author chose to break the novel up into these different parts? What impact did it have versus a more conventionally structured narration?
Each part of the novel offers a new view into the events and characters. Whose retelling did you find most compelling, and why? Whose did you “trust?”
The most extreme reworking of what you believe transpired comes in the fourth part of the novel. Were you surprised by Midred Bevel’s revelations? Why or why not?
Although Andrew Bevel dies before completing his autobiography, he is successful at suppressing Harold Vanner’s novel. What does Trust have to say about whose story gets told, and who gets to shape the telling? Did reading this novel cause you to reexamine what you have considered to be “fact” or “history?”
Andrew Bevel can act as he does because he is rich and powerful. What did you take away from the novel about the relationship between money and power? Are they always synonymous?
Mildred expresses that she and Andrew have a symbiotic relationship, where each uses the other for something. It’s clear what Andrew gained, but what do you think Mildred gained from their relationship? Why was this valuable to her?
Both Ida and Mildred are constrained by their gender. How do each of them conform to or rebel against these constraints?
How do you think Ida reacted to the revelations of Mildred’s diary? What do you think Ida will do with her newfound knowledge about the Bevels?
Trust Book Club Questions PDF
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