This book started out strong for me, but ending up being a "did not finish" because it couldn't hold my attention and I just didn't connect with the story.

ok, so you spend most of your time in the head of a dude who just has constant good things happen to him and a cadre of women who he treats like props and then a tiny bit of the book comes from other perspectives who are all like, yeah he got me wrong but also, omg he is so irresistible. Mercifully short and I ended it with a Slow clap.

I enjoyed (2) previous books by this author: Ties (2017) and Trick (2018) so I was so looking forward to the latest release. Pietro Vella and Teresa Quadraro are a couple who met when he was a teacher and she a former student. They were in one of those love/hate relationships; one day they are hot for one another, then they fight, they break up and they get together again. One day to help solidify their commitment to one another they agree to share a deep, dark secret about themselves that neither has shared with anyone else. This turns out to be a huge mistake since as soon as they do this they break up for a final time.

Each moves on in life - Pietro marries Nadia and fathers a daughter, Emma. He feels dissatisfied in his marriage and in his career as a literature teacher while Teresa becomes a success as a scientist and professor at prestigious MIT. Despite the time that has passed Pietro remains haunted by the secret he confessed years earlier but, is it really the secret that leaves him distressed? Surprisingly, Teresa holds a kind of power over Pietro despite the fact that their paths have only crossed a few times in decades.

The story is divided into three parts - Pietro's story is the most telling, we also hear from his adult daughter Emma and finally Teresa's voice. The story was expertly translated from Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri and although I enjoyed this one, I was left wanting just a bit more.


Rating - 3.5/5 stars

Wow! Domenico Starnone builds the tension in this book until it is almost unbearable. It is only after you are done racing through the pages that you don't even know what horrible thing the characters are trying to hide.

Well, this book is definitely not for everyone. But I loved it! But you have to be ok with being left in the dark!
A teacher and his ex-student, start a passionate, volatile love affair. After one of their fights, they agree to tell each other their deepest darkest secret that have never shared with anyone else. But soon afterwards, they break up. Yet the hold they have over one another, lasts a lifetime. It’s a book of unreliable narrators, performative personas, and the complexities of love, lust and loyalty. Translated by Jhumpa Lahari, this Italian novel, left me wondering… in a really good way.

I don't love reading about romances, but something about Trust worked. The characters were so well drawn and the plot was so much richer than what I was expecting. I recommend!

I absolutely loved "Trick" but I couldn't get into this book. The main character, Pietro, is so unlikeable and misogynistic. I am usually all for flawed narrators but I just couldn't stand him. I wish Part One had been much shorter. I liked Part Two and Three.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

The first section, from Pietro's point of view was by far the longest and I grew tired of it. The second section featured the extremely unlikeable Emma, Pietro's now adult daughter. Finally the third section, from the perspective of Pietro's former pupil and then girlfriend Teresa, corrects or contradicts elements of the first section. This revision was the most interesting part of the story for me and I wish that section had been longer.

Overall this seemed to be a lot of fuss about not very much, with deliberate opacity and ambiguity, which left me occasionally wondering if I was missing the point - maybe I was...

The unfolding of a man's life told in three parts.

Pietro - not obviously a bad man but underlyingly terrible, much of the story is told from his perspective as a young insecure writer and mediocre husband. Then his adult daughter Emma years later speaks only of his brilliance, but probably because that's all she ever been told of him.
And finally Theresa, the volatile ex who holds a power over Pietro with confessions they made to one another over 50 years before.

An interesting dynamic between characters and a male protagonist who could be comparable to a thinky woman and was just the right amount of insufferable to not make me roll my eyes right into the back of my head.

Thank you @europaeditionsuk and @netgalley for the proof.

Trust is written in three parts, and is a translation from Italy. The beginning, written by a man, has long sentences; in fact the third sentence took up pages in my kindle! The theme of the first part is Love.

Part two tells the perspective of the daughter and a letter she writes.

Part three tells it correctly. It opens “I don’t like the way the daughter writes, or the father.” Yup, that’s me!

This book is recommended for people who enjoy analyzing writing styles.

Thanks to Netgalley and Europa Editions for the privilege of reading this translation.

Loved this book so well written so engaging.Another wonderful lyrical novel by thi author.I book 📖 Will b recommending.#netgalley #europabooks

Wonderful new book from the ever engaging Starnone. Simple plot that has ever deepening development. Great read !

This book was wonderful; engaging, thought-provoking, beautifully written and translated. I would certainly recommend it to fellow fans of Elena Ferrante.

Domenico Starnone is an Italian superstar writer- for good reason.
His writing style is engaging, his characters are sympathetic, and his storylines are unique.

Trust is no exception- the writing was superb, the characters were quirky and the storyline- Theresa and Pietro's lifetime "affair", premised on the secrets that they kept from everyone but each other, was something I hadn't seen before.

Unfortunately, I had trouble connecting with the characters in this one- they were quirky, yes, and that's usually a good thing for me, but I just couldn't like Pietro-his male chauvinist attitude and overblown sense of self worth were off-putting. I felt like his relationships with everyone were strained because he couldn't get out of his own ego, but his opinions and the way he treated others made me not care for them, either.

It's complicated, I know. Perhaps that was Starnone's intention- to create an anti-anti-feminist novel. If so, bravo. However, Pietro is still a stronzo.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europa for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have read Domenico Starnone's 'Ties' and loved it. I'm afraid that I can't say the same about 'Trust'. I found it repetitive, lacking depth of characters, and overall tedious.

The story begins with Pietro and Theresa who are having a love affair. They each agree to tell the other their most shameful secret. Afterwards, their affair evaporates though Pietro lives in fear for the rest of his life that Theresa will reveal his secret. Despite Pietro's success as an expert on pedagogy, having published two books and numerous articles, he can't leave his fear behind.

Pietro marries Nadia and has three children while Theresa becomes a renowned scientist.

The story is told in three sections, the second one being the most interesting. The book is short but when I'd put it down, I wasn't drawn to picking it up again.

When Jhumpa Lahiri translates a novel, you read it! While it has flaws—and damn are the characters unlikable— it also provided a really unique and compelling reading experience. The premise is a good one: at the end of tumultuous affair, two people exchange their deepest, darkest, life ruining secrets—basically mutually assured destruction. That decision follows them their entire lives and Starnone structures the story in a really refreshing way. The vast majority of the book is told by one person, and at the end you get two short chapters from two different perspectives that really make you question the original narrative. I love it when short books can pack such a punch, and this one certainly delivered.

Pietro doesn't fully understand love - but when he falls for a former student of his, Teresa, they begin a love affair as intense as fire and just as volatile. After too many arguements and desperate to save their torrid relationship - they decide to tell each other their darkest secret, something nobody else will ever know, to unite them together forever. But then they parted ways, still clinging onto the others secret.

But now, as Pietro falls in love once more and moves forward in his life with Nadia, Teresa is always there casting a shadow from afar. It feels like every time he makes a move, she's there somehow. Is it possible they really were destined to stay united forever as they intended, or is just guilt playing tricks on their minds?

Starnone is hailed as a superstar in the world of literary fiction; this is the first time I've read any of his work and I'll have to agree to an extent. He has crafted each character in this tale to perfection and definitely has masterful control of keeping a reader in a permanent state of tension. Spanning possibly five decades and three different points of view during the course of this story, it managed to stay cohesive and grasp the attention of the reader to force them to question themselves about the intricacies of love and betrayal.

Unfortunately, despite appreciating a flawed narrator, Pietro's attitude towards women in general made me dislike him and not be able to get as invested in his progression as I'd have liked. The writing style in general was not what I'd expected - there was a lot of telling rather than showing which left me having the information about these characters but not feeling anything about it.

This was more about the characters as they progress through life than the relationships or the dark secrets they've had, watching them go on to have sucessful careers and families with the knowledge that this nameless secret still exists somewhere, always just a few words away from being revealed

In Trust, we follow the professional and romantic pursuits of Pietro, a bit of a bumbling protagonist that has frequent flights of strong morals but apathetic sincerity. Pietro's main plight is his hesitation about his choices in life with his involvement with two women, as he wonders what everyone in life often wonders: did I make the right choice? This question evolves into Pietro wondering about how his choices become a reflection of his own way of being perceived, both in his rising stardom as a writer and his private persona of being a womanizer of sorts.

While Trust wasn't entirely endearing to me on a content level, its Starnone's frenzy of feelings that Pietro experiences that has him remain captivating. With themes of secrecy, deception, and intimacy, they make the standard ingredients of a literary fiction novel, but what can hook readers in with Trust is making the decision to either think Pietro is deserving of patience and sympathy or if he's just a really cleverly disguised f**kboi.

A short novel, which could have been shorter still, with some editing of part one, Told from Pietro’s point of view, which meanders and repeats. But, the set up there leads into a satisfying parts two and three.

DNF -The cover and previous reviews enticed me to have a go but this wasn't for me but my husband thinks it looks good and so he may read it.