These are some of the questions readers find themselves asking as they make their way through Diaz’s short, crisp sentences. But is he? Can loneliness truly be a drug toward seeking revenge? Can his personal grief be tied to the “health of our nation’s economy”?Ī 1998 US postage stamp about the 1929 stock market crash. With his mother’s passing, and then his wife’s illness, Andrew may come across as a lonely character. Martha’s thirst to pursue the goal of creating a theme park of everything English after her father’s sudden disappearance is echoed in the character of Andrew Bevel. This focus on the American nation and its transformation brings to mind Julian Barnes’ England, England (1998). What occurs most strongly in Diaz’s story is the idea that an individual has of a nation, of belonging, and the wish to transform oneself with it. The plot itself shows the great lengths that fiction can take to tell the story of one man and a country ravaged by war, capitalism and the “bonds” of kinship.

Andrew is disappointed at how he and his wife Mildred are portrayed in the “novel” and he wants Ida’s help to correct it. It is in the memoir of Ida Partenza, Andrew Bevel’s private secretary, that Diaz’s Trust comes together. When this section too keeps the reader confused about what exactly is going on, Diaz brings in the third and longest section. Following the “novel”, the reader encounters an account of the man on whom the fictional character Benjamin Rask is based, Andrew Bevel.

Trust by hernan diaz review