Well, first of all, the fourth section of Trust (by Hernan Diaz) did indeed pull everything together so that it makes sense. Trust is the story of a financier who made a fortune in the 1920s, even during the stock market crash in 1929. The first section is a novel written by a man who sensationalizes the story to make it into a best seller. The second section is from the point of view of the financier himself, who wants to re-create his story after this unflattering novel has been published. He works with a ghostwriter, and the third section is told from her point of view as she meets with him, sometimes daily, to take dictation while he tells the story he wants people to hear. The fourth section is from the point of view of the financier's wife.
The whole thing is like an intricate clockwork mechanism, or some complex origami, that folds endlessly in on itself and then opens out into a flower or a mythical beast. Layers and layers are slowly built up in the first two sections, only to be dismantled in the third and fourth sections. It's brilliant. But there's no denying it is mind-numbing to read the first half.
Section one starts out sounding like Henry James (which I don't necessarily mind), but it goes on for far too long. (At least, that's what you think as you're reading it.) Then you get to the brusque, no-nonsense bare bones of the second section. The two male narrators are equally tedious blow-hards who have told their manipulated stories at length. Then in the third and fourth sections, the true story begins to emerge. It's fascinating. I will remember "Air like french horns" far longer than the pompous tedium of the beginning.
On the other hand, if you can't get through it, I can't say I blame you. I only kept going because I had heard it would pay off (and it did). I did it by reading 10-15 minutes a day for a couple of weeks. If you're a patient reader, it's worth the tedium in the end.
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And it took so long to tell you about Trust that I don't really have space to tell you about the others, so maybe I'll just tell you about The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta, a clear-eyed account of the rise of Christian nationalism told by a journalist who is unapologetically Evangelical. I avoid politics and political books like the plague, but I was roped into reading this one because it was the non-fiction selection for September for a book group I'm in. I ended up giving it five stars. Here's what I wrote on goodreads:
I was raised evangelical, so I had many points of contact with the history Alberta describes. My dad worked at First Baptist-Dallas back in the Criswell days, I sang in the youth choir at a different church, I attended one of the Christian colleges he describes (not Liberty), I worked at a Christian camp in the summers, the same one I had attended as a camper years before. Like Alberta, my faith was everything to me.
But unlike Alberta, I left
it behind many years ago to become what the conservatives in this book
would call a squishy, woke progressive. I still have many friends and
family members who are evangelical, but they are mostly of the Never-Trump variety, so the depth and breadth of the spread of Christian
nationalism Alberta describes was almost shocking to me. Alberta is
thoughtful and engaging. He never compromises his commitment to his conservative Christian faith, but he also never backs away from critiquing the rise of Christian nationalism. He's a brave man, and it's a highly readable account. Definitely worth reading.
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I review most books I read on Goodreads (not "real" reviews, usually just a paragraph or two), but I'm actually not a goodreads expert so I don't know how to link to my reviews. The best I can do is give you the link to my profile, in case you want to follow along.
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