Trust
Hernan Diaz, Picador
***** (5 stars)
The 1920s power couple is Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street genius, and she’s the quiet wife who adores music. At least that’s how the story goes; one of them. Diaz weaves four tales of the same story in his brilliant and engrossing novel. Underneath the high-flying drama is a quiet study on who shapes our histories, who our narratives serve, and how perspective can create a truth that is divorced from fact. Trust is an intriguing read that is set in the past in order to hold up a mirror for today. — Tiah Beautement
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Cousins
Aurora Venturini, Faber & Faber
***** (5 stars)
The blurb does an awful disservice to this darkly funny masterpiece: “Cousins is the story of women in an impoverished family outside Buenos Aires, forced to suffer a series of ordeals, including disfigurement, illegal abortion and murder.” It is that, but so much more. Venturini was 85 when she won the Página/12, a major prize in Argentina, for this novel in 2007, which in Spanish was called Las Primas. She lived a life made for headlines: best friends with Eva Peron, fleeing to Paris and becoming pals with Violette Leduc, and she had spiders for pets. But it is her brilliant writing that is to be celebrated — poetically crude and eccentrically brutal. Cousins, as Venturina was quoted in the introduction, is an autobiographical novel. “I’m not very family-orientated, I never was, but I always end up writing about my family, or families. My creations are all freaks. My family was very freakish. It’s what I know. I’m not very ordinary. I’m a strange creature who only wants to write. I’m not very sociable. I only see people on December 24.” — Jennifer Platt
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Eye Brother Horn
Bridget Pitt, Catalyst Press
**** (4 stars)
Eye Brother Horn is an engaging time travel to 19th-century Zululand. The British colonial enterprise is in full swing, discharging both its soft power — missionaries — and its hard one — land dispossession and game hunting. This happens alongside deforestation to create more land for sugar plantations as the demand for the sweet stuff back in England soars. The story, told through a missionary family, features Moses and Daniel who are progressive despite the time and context. Moses is brought to the Mission as a baby floating in a basket like the biblical one. Daniel and Moses grow up as brothers until the inevitable reality of racism catches up with them. This book is recommended to readers of all walks, especially those who have a fondness for history. — Sydney Seshibedi
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