Penguin Press
Featuring: Andrew Bogle; Mr. Charles Dickens
464 pages ISBN: 0525558969 EAN: 9780525558965 Kindle: B0BP66G6B7 Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith is a historical fiction at the heart of which is the fictional character of Eliza Touchet, cousin by marriage of the English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. We see most of the novel play out from Eliza’s point of view, including famous historical events such as the “Tichborne Trials” and the “Newgate Novels” controversy.
The story has three independent stories/timelines that are supposed to serve as one cohesive, connected story. The present is where Eliza lives as a housekeeper with her cousin William after her husband dies, and we witness the downfall of William as an author due to the controversy against the Newgate Novels that glorified the livelihood of street criminals. In the past, we see various time jumps, such as Eliza in a romantic entanglement with William and his first wife, Frances. We see another flashback of a primary witness of the Tichborne Trials, Andrew Bogle, and his life in Jamaica before he ended up in England with Mr. Roger Tichborne.
Each of these plots deals with its own concept of “fraud.” This element is exemplified during the Tichborne case, which is all about how a different man is posing to be a certain Roger Tichborne to earn the high estates of the family. Additionally, Eliza thinks her cousin’s works are superficial and derivative, therefore considering him a fraud. She is not true to herself as she could never confess her love to Frances, making Eliza a fraud as well. Although this subtlety and layering should have worked for the book, I found the plot dragged on with random anecdotes, not proving a clear point.
THE FRAUD aspires to be as beautiful as The Song of Solomon, touching on magical realism when Andrew Bogle tells his life story, as satirical and gripping as To Kill a Mockingbird with its courtroom scenes, but fails to achieve that magnanimity on both fronts. I would have liked it more if a fresh perspective was given to the readers on these forgotten events of history. If you know these events and want to learn about them, you might enjoy the book more than I did.
From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed
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 sceptical. 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”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—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.”
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