A rough draft of Andrew's book immediately follows Bonds and reads like a spluttering self-justification. Referring to Benjamin's standing after the stock market crash of 1929, Vanner writes, "Only one man seemed to have been immune to the catastrophe." As Benjamin proceeds to multiply his assets, Helen's "quiet form of mania" grows so debilitating that he takes her to a sanatorium in Switzerland for treatment.īenjamin comes across so atrociously in Vanner's novel that Mildred's husband, Andrew, on whom Benjamin is based, undertakes a score-settling autobiography, My Life.
In Bonds, a fictionalized version of Mildred's life, novelist Harold Vanner has renamed her Helen and her New York financier husband Benjamin. Trust has one question at its heart: Who was Mildred Bevel? In Hernan Diaz's engrossing, high-concept second novel, he takes a four-part approach to answering the question: a short novel, an unfinished autobiography, a memoir and Mildred's own journal.
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