The Fraud: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

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With the virtuosic agility of an actor in a one-woman play, Smith as narrator so fully embodies each of her many distinct characters that she exposes, sometimes without their even knowing, the ways in which every one of us misrepresents ourselves in one way or another. This is a 19th-century novel of manners in which various people have very bad ones, and the result, thanks to the author’s perfect ear for comic timing, is vigorously, insistently funny…Smith bounces nimbly across the vernacular empire while leaving no mistake about her ubiquitous irony, her vocal side eye.”— Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review I'm not the world's biggest fan of Zadie Smith. I liked White Teeth, but that's the only one I was able to finish. The other ones were... not to my taste. However, this new one, historical fiction set in the Victorian era about fraud, identity, and the shadow of colonialism? That's my cup of tea, baby!

Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing 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 realise. 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. She had always noticed a great many Chinese and Indian seamen in this area and they were all still here, but there were also several newer shops with their signs written in the ancient script of the Jews, and a small delegation of Turks - or at least men in fez hats - peering into the windows of a jeweller. I was off and on engaged in this story. I wasn't sure what Smith's aim was. To tell a fictionalized story of a true event that had England enraptured? To write a historical novel featuring real authors of the mid-19th century? Smith deftly weaves rich source material, including trial transcripts, into a lively though never straightforward narrative. . . . In a brilliant move, The Fraud is told largely from the close third-person viewpoint of Eliza Touchet, an uncommonly strong, sharp-tongued observer…What makes Smith’s latest novel so compelling is the way Eliza grapples not just with the suggestibility of most people. . . but also with her own biases and limitations.”— Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science MonitorBased on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what's true can prove a complicated task. In the 1860s, a butcher with a shadowy past claimed that he was Sir Roger Tichborne, the presumed-dead son of Lady Tichborne and the heir to a vast fortune. The evidence against the butcher seemed overwhelming: He could not remember his supposed classmates, could not recall basic facts of a gentleman’s education and could not even speak French, Tichborne’s first language. More damning, details about his “missing years” at sea were shown to be false. And yet for many thousands of devoted fans, the very audaciousness of his claim argued in its favor. How about Eliza's growing social consciousness? Without any narrative ramifications -- for instance, if she was arrested at a violent protest -- it's character development, not a story.

Kilburn, 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter. It is hard indeed to judge a respectable woman on her source of income, Mr Cruikshank, when so very few means of procuring an income are open to her.’ the great majority of people turn out to be extraordinarily suggestible, with brains like sieves through which the truth falls. Fact and fiction meld in their minds.”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. Employing nimble dialogue and sly humor, Smith moves The Fraud along swiftly and mysteriously, challenging you to keep up with competing plot lines. One of these concerns the Tichborne affair — the wild, real-life court case in which a gruff butcher claimed to be a long lost nobleman and heir to a sizable fortune. Smith’s retelling of this “trial of the century” alone is worth the price of admission for The Fraud, though I could have spent an entire novel in the company of prosaic novelist William Ainsworth and Eliza Touchet, his witty abolitionist housekeeper, muse, lover, and, of course, cousin.”— The Philadelphia Inquirer

There are multiple parts to the story. It worked best when Smith concentrated on Eliza Touchet, the cousin by marriage of William Ainsworth. Through her eyes, we get to see the “Tichborne trial” when Roger Castro, an Australian butcher attempts to prove he is the true Lord Roger Tichborne. Andrew Bogle is a former Jamaican slave who swears that the claimant is truly Lord Tichborne. There’s a whole section devoted to his past and while I get why Smith wrote it, it also took me out of the primary story. As present as are all these themes in the book, the core, in my opinion, is the fluid nature of truth. Every individual’s experiences - where, when and how they live - coalesce into their own truth. Yes, there are immutable facts, but how they land on each person constitutes that person’s truth.I will admit to struggling with The Fraud. There are flashes of brilliance and humor, especially when Smith is writing about Ainsworth and his prolific, but bad writing, but at times she seems to fall victim to the same things she’s making fun of. The book meanders and I felt like Smith was trying to cram way too much into the story. But Smith’s age at the time — 26 — must have felt positively geriatric to me. It was only when I started publishing in my 20s that I could appreciate what a prodigy Smith was; and throughout my career she has remained a startling (and despair-inducing) beacon of what a writer can achieve at a young age. An undergraduate when she embarked on “White Teeth,” she was not yet 30 when she published — to my mind — her masterpiece, “On Beauty,” a wise, sad and hilarious book about American race relations that would have justly been called a great American social novel had the American literary scene at that time been more attuned to race as a theme. I did have a little skip ahead and it looks like a vaguely more interesting storyline is introduced, but I've just got nothing left to give at this point. I liked it a lot, there is a great presence to the main character. It’s also tongue in cheek, Zadie is winking at the reader throughout: 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. . . .