collected
Trust cover

Fiction · Literary Fiction · Mystery & Thriller · Historical Fiction

Trust

Hernan Diaz

Highly regardedPulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2023

First published 2022

Reading facts

✓ Checked
Reading effort
65 / 100High
Length
416 pagesRiverhead Books · 2023
Reading time
8 h 15 minat 50 pages an hour ·
Pace
Measured
Emotional intensity
3 / 5

Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.

About the book

Wall Street financier Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen belong to New York’s richest circles in the 1920s, as speculation swells ahead of the crash. Their marriage and the origins of their fortune supply the story of Bonds, the fictional novel that opens Trust. Other versions compete with that telling, while a woman tries to separate what happened from what has been written.

Reader notes

Built from four documents written in distinct voices for different purposes, the historical novel asks you to compare accounts and notice omissions. Reading it means repeatedly reconsidering the authority of each narrator; the story accumulates through competing claims instead of following a continuous narrative.

How it reads

Writing style
Experimental
Tone
Cerebral · Detached · Reflective · Unsettling
Structure
Fragmented · Framed
Driven by
Ideas · Mystery · Voice
Point of view
Mixed viewpoints
Setting
New York City

Reading complexity

Writing
3 / 5
Ideas
4 / 5
Structure
5 / 5
Background knowledge
2 / 5
About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing
How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas
How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure
How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge
Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity
Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Themes

  • Art and creativity
  • Gender
  • Knowledge and truth
  • Marriage
  • Power
  • Wealth

Content notes

Violence
Mild
Sexual content
None
Swearing
None
Substance use
Mild
Abuse
Mild
Self-harm or suicide
None

Standing and awards

Highly regarded

  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2023
  • Kirkus Prize, 2022
  • Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction longlist, 2023
  • Booker Prize longlist, 2022
  • NYT 10 Best Books, 2022

Questions readers ask

How long is it?

416 pages in the Riverhead Books 2023 paperback edition.

Which edition is shown here?

Riverhead Books · 2023 · paperback. ISBN 9780593420324.

How long does it take to read Trust?

About 8 hours 15 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 416-page Riverhead Books edition. Dense books can take longer.

About the author

Hernan Diaz

Hernán Díaz writes historical fiction that revisits familiar American myths by changing the angle of narration. In Trust, the story of a Wall Street fortune is divided among four competing texts, each exposing how wealth can shape the record of marriage and public life. In the distance approaches the frontier from the opposite direction, following a Swedish boy east while settlers move west. Its spare, atmospheric descriptions and episodic encounters make the landscape strange and unstable rather than heroic. Díaz repeatedly uses outsiders, documents, rumor, and conflicting voices to examine how power turns partial accounts into accepted history.

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Edition and details

Publisher
Riverhead Books
Publication year
2023
Format
paperback
Pages
416
ISBN
9780593420324
Edition language
English
Original language
English
First published
2022
Genres and form
Fiction · Literary Fiction · Mystery & Thriller · Historical Fiction · Novel · Business & Economics · Literary fiction · Experimental fiction · Psychological fiction
Editions
10
Languages
3 (English, Polish, Unspecified)

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