If you liked
Books like Trust
by Hernan Diaz
Trust is Hernan Diaz writing four nested narratives about a Gilded Age financier, his wife, the ghostwriter of his memoir, and the woman who finally tells the truth. The Pulitzer Prize winner that interrogates how the historical record of American capitalism has been edited by the men who controlled it. If you finished it and needed another novel of equivalent structural ambition, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Goldfinchby Donna Tartt
“The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013 review. Theo Decker, thirteen, survives a Metropolitan Museum bombing that kills his mother and ends up with a stolen painting that defines the next decade of his life. Pulitzer Prize 2014.”
North Woodsby Daniel Mason
“North Woods by Daniel Mason 2023 review. Three centuries of one house in the western Massachusetts forest, told through a chain of inhabitants whose lives connect across time. National Book Award finalist.”
Circeby Madeline Miller
“Circe by Madeline Miller 2018 review. The witch-goddess of the Odyssey narrates her own life. Miller's second novel and the canonical contemporary feminist mythic re-telling.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
Yellowfaceby R. F. Kuang
“Yellowface by R. F. Kuang 2023 review. A struggling white novelist witnesses the accidental death of her successful Asian-American novelist friend and steals her unfinished manuscript. Kuang's contemporary satirical novel about race and publishing.”
Jamesby Percival Everett
“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
FAQ
Common questions about Trust read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Trust?
- North Woods. Same patient layering of nested period-appropriate prose registers, same structural willingness to use form itself as the argument. Daniel Mason writes more loosely than Diaz but the project is comparable.
- I want another novel about money and American power.
- The Goldfinch is the maximalist art-and-money pick. James (Percival Everett) is the historical-American version. Yellowface (R. F. Kuang) is the publishing-industry version of the same question about who gets to tell which story.
- I want more Hernan Diaz.
- In the Distance (2017) is the Pulitzer-finalist earlier novel — a Western set in the mid-nineteenth-century American West, almost wordless in long stretches. It is structurally completely different from Trust and worth reading on its own terms.
- I want another four-narrative novel.
- Pachinko approaches it through four generations. Circe approaches it through mythological time. Outside the catalog, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is the canonical contemporary four-or-more-narrative novel.
The original