Trust

It is confusing in parts whether this is a collection of short stories or a cohesive, inter-connected story. And while the prose is well-written and the era is well-detailed, the decision to have almost no dialogue through the first half of the book both helped the flow, but at the same time gave a feeling of looking in (distantly) from the outside instead of being in the usual back and forths between the characters. When the second half of the book shifts these dynamics to more of a traditional structure, it does seem to get more engaging, even pulling it the shadow of a piece from the first half. But then there is a weird turn with a final run of pages that reads more like gibberish than clever.