#hernan diaz

[oops-i-guess-i-did-a-full-180]

i have watched 2 of dua lipa's service95 interviews and my god am i in love with this woman. oosh.

[skarszanov]

Alexander Skarsgård is the narrator for 'In the Distance' by Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Hernan Diaz! It's an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent story of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlaw. (via prhaudio)

⁣📸: thomashowaltandersen⁣

[kindaskimpy]

Alexander Skarsgård is the narrator for IN THE DISTANCE by Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Hernan Diaz [x]

[sea-changed]

Discussing Confessions of the Fox with @wrishwrosh I'm realizing that many of my complaints about it are similar to my complaints about Trust, in that both novels have totally banger concepts--and both are highly conceptual--paired with executions so lackluster it sort of boggles my mind. A great idea in fact does not make a great or even decently good novel, and I think in both cases it would've taken a notably high level of skill to truly pull off what they wanted to do, but in the process of reading both I did wonder very genuinely if the authors were even trying at all.

And I'm sure they were! As I said, extremely difficult concepts to pull off gracefully! But as a reader I felt deeply frustrated and almost betrayed by both; reading them was like being stuck in a cool museum with a guide who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[ilovetheideaofu]

Alexander Skarsgård is narrating an audiobook!

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

Out January 7th, 2025 on Apple Books, Audible, Spotify, audiobooks.com, audiobookstore.com, Barnes and Noble, Chirp, Google play, Kobo and Libro.fm

A preview of the audiobook can be found here

[jacobwren]

“Reality is a fiction with an unlimited budget.” ― Hernan Diaz, Trust

[andreabadgley]

Saturday morning after wiping the dew off the chairs.

[emmersreads]

Trust by Hernan Diaz - Review

3/5

This won a Pulitzer Prize in spite of its heartbreakingly dull cover design. Seriously; what about this futuristic bell jar rock building conveys ‘Rashomon-style exploration of perspective and narrative in the Gilded era New York financial aristocracy’? Don’t tell me the first thing is more enticing than the second either. You’re lying.

Because we all judge books by their cover, I didn’t really consider picking this one up until I found a nice second-hand copy for not very much money.

The Pros:

Interesting concept and setting. As we live in interesting times (it remains to be seen whether we’re in a second gilded age or whether it has already passed us by and we’re straight into depression), it feels like an appropriate era to look back on. And early economic incidents are often batshit insane.

I liked the take on an epistolic narrative. Trust is told through four diagetic sources, all written about the same period: the gossipy novel barely pretending not to be a fictionalization of the life of financial titan Andrew Bevel, Bevel’s own unfinished name-clearing autobiography, the decades-later memoir of Bevel’s ghost writer Ida Partenza, and finally the private journal of Bevel’s reclusive and mysterious wife. The sources penetrate deeper and deeper through the layers of obfuscation and narrative-building, attempting to uncover the true nature of the genius behind Bevel’s miraculous success. It’s a really effective way to explore the self-mythologization of finance.

The Cons:

I really wish Trust had done more with the setting. The Gilded age was a period with a very particular image and style. I would have enjoyed a little more grandiosity and excess, especially in the early section of the book where little of the comparison between accounts exists to hold our interest. Instead, it feels a little stripped down, like it could take place just about anywhere.

I found the eventual twist boring and predictable. I wish it had recontextualized the preceding book in a less clear cut and binary way. Ironically for a book critical of the self-mythologizing of the finance world, its mythology is its flaw here. It needs to establish a narrative of a single supernatural genius in order to take this image apart. But, to my mind, only ends up inverting it. Like if the wizard of Oz was revealed to be a fraud only for us to then find he was being puppeted muppet-style by a second even more secret wizard that was real this time.

It’s hard to review a book that is merely fine, especially one with as few rough edges as this. All I can say is that I wanted more. The setting and topic lend themselves to shock and awe — skyscrapers, over-sized statues, numbers with so many zeros on the end that your eyes kind of glaze over — but the actual story is almost clinical in its simplicity. This is a sad scenario where I have more to say about the paratext (I started this review with two paragraphs about the cover design, and in fairness ‘Trust’ is a a great title for this - you could get a more than decent college English essay out of it) than about the text itself.

Our current society is in many ways simply the remodeled detritus of the Gilded Era. Unfortunately, Trust has none of the same staying power.