Book Review: The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Inspired by a celebrated court case, Smith’s dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery.

Publisher’s Summary

It is 1873. Mrs Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper — and cousin by marriage — of a once famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life, and the next. But she is also skeptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle meanwhile grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The ‘Tichborne Trial’ captivates Mrs Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task…

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of ‘other people.’

The Book Review

This was an entirely entertaining and fascinating read. As far as narrators go, Eliza Touchet might just be one of my favorites to date.

‘What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires filling. With things like angry letters to The Times.’

The Fraud is a big book in many ways, not just on account of its number of pages. It’s a big story, at times complicated to follow as it traversed from one era to another, even more so in the section where we switched narrators to Andrew Bogle and became privy to his story and that of his extended family network in Jamaica. I got a little lost in this part, the cast of characters was vast and the style of narration didn’t lend itself to being easy to follow.

‘What really interested her in it all was the presumption. Of recognition, of respect — of attention itself. Why did he assume such things as his due? Was this what men assumed?’

The story is rather scathing, repeatedly so, of Charles Dickens, as a person more than his work, but I will admit this grew tiresome as I am a huge Dickens fan and feel his contribution to literature immense and worthy of note, not ridicule. The work of Charles Dickens remains in print whereas the work of William Ainsworth does not.

‘Mrs Touchet sighed and held her tongue. She had, in the past, stopped reading William’s novels near the end, midway through, and, on one occasion, after only the second chapter. But she had never before been defeated by the first page — until now.’

The never-ending court case was fascinating to me, that this actually happened, and was so drawn out! I enjoyed all of these sections immensely, particularly the commentary on it by the new Mrs Ainsworth, who was zealous in her support of the fraudster.

‘When young, she had never understood why old women dithered so. Why they led conversations down dead ends and almost always overstayed their welcome. She did not know then what it was to have no definition in the world, no role and no reason.’

On balance, the things about this novel I liked outweigh those I found tiresome. I think it’s an incredibly clever and highly entertaining story — a rollicking good read!

Book Length —464 pages

Hardcover Price — $21.26 (Amazon)