“Trust” traces the life story of an early 20th-century financier through a quartet of nested perspectives: a melodramatic novella about their marriage; the unfinished draft of his autobiography, striving to correct the previous narrative; the recollections of a woman hired to help ghostwrite his memoir; and finally, the diary left behind by his wife. Though on paper it may sound “repellently overcomplicated,” The Post’s critic Ron Charles wrote in his review, “in execution it’s an elegant, irresistible puzzle” — and a meditation on how men construct their self-images in part by burying others’ contributions.
Diaz received the news during a lunch of chicken and waffles in Greenville, S.C., a stop on his current tour promoting the paperback release of “Trust.” “I had to leave the restaurant when I heard, and I started weeping on the curb,” he said. “It was very embarrassing. Three very kind ladies came and said, ‘Honey, are you okay?’ And I did tell them what happened, and we were all hugging. It was very sweet.”
Despite being a Pulitzer finalist for his debut novel, “In the Distance,” Diaz said he wasn’t prepared to win. “I’ve been writing since I was a child,” he said, and has written novels and story collections that were “declined with universal enthusiasm.” Sharing the prize with Kingsolver, “such a brilliant, amazing novelist,” he said, “it’s all too much.”
Charles called Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead” his favorite novel of 2022, describing it as “equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.” Inspired by “David Copperfield,” Kingsolver hasn’t “merely reclothed Dickens’s characters in modern dress and resettled them in southern Appalachia,” he wrote. She has “reconceived the story in the fabric of contemporary life,” and in doing so offers a thrilling and fierce examination of the opioid crisis, the foster-care system and other moral stains on this very wealthy country.
Finalist: “The Immortal King Rao,” by Vauhini Vara. This debut novel by Vara, a tech journalist, braids immigrant saga and sci-fi fable, alternating between the stories of a tech entrepreneur’s rise and his daughter’s rebellion.
