Trust Review

Pietro and Teresa’s love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they’ve never told another person, something they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. They will hear the other’s confessions without judgment and with love in their hearts. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain united forever, more intimately connected than ever.

A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads, it seems, of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out?

A master storyteller and a novelist of the highest order, Starnone’s gaze is trained unwaveringly on the fault lines in our publica personas and the complexities of our private selves. Trust asks how much we are willing to bend to show the world our best side, knowing full well that when we are at our most vulnerable we are also at our most dangerous.

General Impressions

This was one of those books that I:

1. Fell in love with the cover (Europa Editions does not kid around)

2. Trust;) the publisher so I was prepared to like it (Europa Editions' enemies bodies are never found)

3. It's Italian and this year I'm rooting for everything Italian

4. Loved the synopsis that I read five seconds before I started the book.

I fell in love with this cover because it reminded me of Normal People which was completely at odds with the Gone Girl vibes I got from the synopsis vibes so I was curious about what side this one would lean towards. It ended up being like nothing I was expecting

The book is divided into three parts: the first and biggest was set between the 60s-70s and was told through the point of view of the "hero". My first impressions of this guy weren't the best to tell you the truth. In fact, I thought he was borderline a predator, not because he was dating younger women but because how he insisted on making them smaller and conform to his ideal of what a relationship and a partner should be while he was a not so ideal person.

I don't know how much I trusted this man, or more concretely, I didn't believe him completely when it came to the kind of man he claimed to have become. While other characters support his version of the facts when it came to the good he did to the world, both women he maintained romantic relationships with seem either to dislike him or have lived in his shadow. Take a guess at who they were and why.

The second part of the book is only a couple of pages long and is set in the present time, following Pietro's oldest daughter, a successful journalist who worships her father and forces other people to consider his name for an award, even though few remember him. Through her eyes, we see the best of fathers and men and even when her mother seems to break that illusion with a few comments here and there, she rationalizes them in order to never think lesser of the man.

The last and equally short part of the book is told through the point of view of the woman that started it all: Teresa, now a retired scientist living in New York, who has her peace disturbed by Pietro's daughter invitation to return to Italy and be the one to deliver her father's award. Remember that feeling I had that Pietro hadn't been completely honest? I f***ing loved her. She was...difficult but he was a coward and a liar and I liked that she never let herself be made smaller just to be in Pietro's good graces.

She is the one that finishes the book and what an ending.

Oh, you wanted to know what were the secrets? Tough luck!

Conclusions

What to say about this book that many others, older, more well-read, long-lived couldn't say much better? I liked reading this book now in my twenties, and I'm sure I'll like reading it in a completely different way in my thirties or forties. This is the kind of book where the ending doesn't matter nearly as much as the journey. The writing is beautiful, the beginning alone will never leave my mind and Jhumpa Lahiri made an amazing job translating it. I never enjoyed reading a translator's notes more and I definitely want to read her books now too.

Thank you to Europa Editions for gifting me this copy.

Rating: 5/5