TRUST by Hernan Diaz

ketchups, a long-standing kitchen task now deemed unsanitary, traditions can adapt to a new world order. Just like the Sullivans.

An entertaining family story with realistic, interesting characters.

TRUST

Diaz, Hernan Riverhead (416 pp.) $28.00 | May 3, 2022 978-0-593-42031-7

A tale of wealth, love, and madness told in four distinct but connected narratives. Pulitzer finalist Diaz’s ingenious second novel—following In the Distance (2017)—opens with the text of Bonds, a Wharton-esque novel by Harold Vanner that tells the story of a reclusive man who finds his calling and a massive fortune in the stock market in the early 20th century. But the comforts of being one of the wealthiest men in the U.S.— even after the 1929 crash—are undone by the mental decline of his wife. Bonds is followed by the unfinished text of a memoir by Andrew Bevel, a famously successful New York investor whose life echoes many of the incidents in Vanner’s novel. Two more documents—a memoir by Ida Partenza, an accomplished magazine writer, and a diary by Mildred, Bevel’s brilliant wife— serve to explain those echoes. Structurally, Diaz’s novel is a feat of literary gamesmanship in the tradition of David Mitchell or Richard Powers. Diaz has a fine ear for the differing styles each type of document requires: Bonds is engrossing but has a touch of the fusty, dialogue-free fiction of a century past, and Ida is a keen, Lillian Ross–type observer. But more than simply succeeding at its genre exercises, the novel brilliantly weaves its multiple perspectives to create a symphony of emotional effects; what’s underplayed by Harold is thundered by Andrew, provided nuance by Ida, and given a plot twist by Mildred. So the novel overall feels complex but never convoluted, focused throughout on the dissatisfactions of wealth and the suppression of information for the sake of keeping up appearances. No one document tells the whole story, but the collection of palimpsests makes for a thrilling experience and a testament to the power and danger of the truth—or a version of it—when it’s set down in print.

A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance.

SHADOWS OF PECAN HOLLOW

Frost, Caroline Morrow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-0-06-306534-5

A woman’s carefully built life is thrown into turmoil when the father of her child arrives on her doorstep, claiming to have changed, in this debut novel. Kit Walker has worked hard to provide a stable home for her daughter, Charlie. Working odd jobs to make ends meet and struggling with Charlie’s behavioral problems, Kit leads a private and isolated existence in the rural Texas town of Pecan Hollow. Her quiet life is a matter of self-preservation. At 13, runaway Kit was picked up and groomed by Manny Romero, an adult who took advantage of her loneliness to get her involved in a string of robberies. Kit bailed when she became pregnant, leaving Manny to be arrested when a job went downhill. But when Manny arrives at her door unannounced, having recently been released from prison, Kit can’t resist letting him back into her life. Frost’s prose is engaging and sharp-edged, carefully attuned to her characters in a way that feels vividly real. Kit’s difficulties with Charlie, who doesn’t know about her mother’s past but whom Kit sees through the lens of her own broken childhood, are realistically depicted with empathy for both of them, while Manny’s capacity for manipulation and cruelty is chillingly depicted from the first time he appears on the page.

A heart-rending and complex examination of one woman’s flawed attempts to overcome her past.