The Fraud (2023) by Zadie Smith

 Book Review

The Fraud (2023)

by Zadie Smith

    I haven't read much Zadie Smith- just On Beauty which was one of the last books from the original 1001 Books list.  The Fraud is her sixth novel, and I was intrigued by previews that indicated it was a work of historical fiction partially set in the mid 19th century milieu of literary London, with characters including Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank and a starring role for now-forgotten English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, who actually out-sold Charles Dickens at certain points in his lengthy career but is now forgotten.  I knew from On Beauty that I could expect The Fraud to be well researched and clever, and I was not disappointed.    The narrator is Eilza Touchet, the cousin and sometimes lover of Ainsworth.

  Touchet is a classic Zadie Smith protagonist, multi-faceted and complex, determined to live her own life after the untimely, early death of her husband.  Much of the plot concerns Touchet's interest in the Tichborne Case, a cause celebre in 1860's and 70's London.  The Tichborne case involved a man who returned from Australia to claim that he was the long lost and previously thought deceased claimant to an English title.  Smith also develops the character of Andrew Bogle, the Jamaican born servant of one of the Tichborne's and a supporter of the Tichborne claimant. The relationship between Touchet and Bogle is well developed but to little impact- there is a hint of the possibility of any interracial relationship but it doesn't go anywhere.

   I gather the reviews have only been so-so, but if you actually are a fan of the literature of mid 19th century England- Dickens et al, then you can hardly afford to skip reading The Fraud.  Also worth noting- I checked out the Audiobook from the library and Zadie Smith herself narrates, which is a very mid 19th century author type of thing to do- Dickens loved giving public readings and doing the voices of his characters.