RaveThe New YorkerDiaz doesn’t endow Håkan with much interiority; we rarely get access to his thoughts, and his conversations are stymied by the language barrier—a clever twist on the strong, silent type ... A curious unevenness begins to surface in the text, as if the writing were giving notes to itself ... There is something deft and quite funny about this maneuver—in peeking into the unfinished manuscript of a vain billionaire’s memoir, one feels a surprising intimacy, even as you learn the shortcomings of the subject’s imagination ... Diaz leads the reader on a journey from abstractions—all that literature is capable of representing, including the markets and moneymen that rule the world—down to something small, private, and experiential. Perhaps Trust, in the end, makes a surprisingly un-postmodern case for what the novel can do. It can deliver discrete, luminous sensations. It can make one subjectivity clear at a time. And it can help you appreciate experience—your hand in front of your face—before it disappears.
Eliot Weinberger
MixedThe Los Angeles Review of BooksWeinberger’s deep erudition shows on the page with both the force and the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But beyond this display, there is beauty and strangeness in the fragments Weinberger has plucked from half-forgotten texts ... Weinberger’s best essays feel like portals into places or times of which you may have heard, vaguely, but which surprise you with their specificity ... Weinberger’s breadth of reference presents unique problems in reading. Though I’m fascinated by Weinberger’s essays, sometimes I feel bored when they linger or meander...Perhaps because of his desire to collect interesting information, Weinberger’s narratives often lose energy.
