From my review of the author’s last novel “Swing Time” I said that my views on her as an author are paradoxical – I think of her as one my favourite authors, read all of her five to date novels immediately on publication, and am very impressed whenever I read of hear articles by or interviews with her ….. and yet ……. I only really loved “White Teeth” of her novels and that more due to its impact as a debut. I am forced to conclude that the author is stronger as an essayist than a novelist.

This her sixth novel – due to be published in September 2023 – is a real departure for her: her first historical fiction book, based around real characters and events.

Effectively the book has two strands woven around a third.

The first and main strand (and which effectively establishes the third party point of view of the novel) is the life of Eliza Touchet – the Scottish born cousin and long term housekeeper of William Ainsworth.

Ainsworth was something of a famous society dandy, but also the prolific author of copious novels; perhaps most famously “Rookwood” which popularised the legend of Dick Turpin and “Jack Sheppard” (which outsold “Oliver Twist” which it was seralised alongside and which was grouped with it as one of a series of so-called “Newgate novels” which controversially glamorised the lives of criminals – here the notorious 18th Century thief and serial prison escapee Honest Jack – the violent video games of their day). After that he produced a series of increasingly over-written and gradually decreasingly successful historical fiction novels (before dying interestingly – at least to me – about a 5 minute drive from my own home).

Eliza here is portrayed as long-term friend of her six-year younger cousin who features her in his early writing. Married at 21 she is then deserted by her husband and young child only a few years into their marriage (with both dying from fever) and thereafter supported, with William’s help, by a £100 pound a year annuity from her husband’s family (who gained and then mainly lost a fortune on Jamaica plantations). At thirty one (in 1830) William’s first wife asks her to come to help her with the three young Ainsworth girls (as William has decided on an Italian tour) and she ends up staying a permanent housekeeper as well as occasional lover of Ainsworth and (while she still lives) Ainsworth’s wife. There she stays for some forty or more years and much of the book is set in the late 1860s and early 1870s (in practice Touchet died in 1869) with Ainsworth recently remarried – to the decidedly working class Sarah – and with Eliza protecting him from a series of letters and packages which seek to remind him of the increasing humiliations of his literary career – and accuse him of various dishonesties in his writing.

When I googled Eliza the first reference which came up (and which Smith also references in an Afterword) is to the 2009 auction of a dedicated first edition of “A Christmas Carol” and the complex relationship between Dickens and Eliza (with a mixture of respect, wariness and attraction on both sides – made even more complex by the breach between Dickens and Ainsworth and later professional jealousy by Ainsworth) is one of the subtexts to the novel. A series of other real life literary world characters pass through the book from frequent salons hosted by Ainsworth – most noticeably his and Dicken’s illustrator George Cruickshank.

The second strand (which perhaps features less than I had expected – only coming in more than half way through the novel and then as observed by Eliza, not with the character being featured directly) is the family story of Andrew Bogle – who grows up as a slave on a Jamaican plantation, before spending time in England and Jamaica with the plantation manager – one Edward Tichborne, before becoming his valet in England (where he twice married) before emigrating to Australia (as changes in circumstances lead to him being pensioned off from the Tichborne family’s service).

And the linking third strand is the notorious Tichborne legal case of the 1860s and 1870s – in which a man “The Claimant” pursued through the Civil Courts (and then was prosecuted through the Criminal Courts for) his claim to be the long-lost, assumed-dead but now Australian-discovered heir to the Tichborne family fortune, with that family (other than his Mother) counter-claiming that he is in fact a Wapping-born butcher’s son. It was a case that intrigued, scandalised and divided the country as The Claimant turned his case into a cause-celebre for the impossibility of working class justice in the court systems (drawing in as well a anti-Catholic strand and intriguingly some early anti-Vaxxers). Included in those drawn to his cause is William’s second wife and in accompanying her to the trials. Eliza becomes fixated on Andrew Bogle who ends up as the main witness for the claimant being who he says he is. Andrew in court, public and private is a dignified and serious character. Eliza’s attraction to Andrew and his bearing (while at the same time convinced herself The Claimant is a fraudster) is complicated by her life long interest in the anti-Slavery movement and her own unease at the source of her fortune. A potential for the annuity to be doubled but with some mysterious potential counter-claimants adds a complexity to the story and further conflict for Eliza between what she feels she believes and what actions or sacrifices she is prepared to take or make for those supposed convictions. And this sense of not living up to one’s beliefs is heightened by Andrew’s more firebrand son William who is prepared to call out what we would today think of as Eliza’s race privilege – much in the way that William’s second wife calls out Eliza’s class privilege: both uncomfortable for Eliza as she herself sees the same blindness to privilege in the passion for Dickens and others for UK reform while still being extremely sexist in their own country and largely oblivious to the on-going inequities caused by the slave trade.

All of this of course has woven through it the titular ideas of Fraud – and more broadly identity, hypocrisy and self-deception, what it really means to know another person if you are still discovering the truth about yourself and what in turn that means for the craft of a writer including ideas of appropriation.

The reader though is made to work for these ideas as the strands do not fully coalesce – I think a crucial quote in the book is when we read of Eliza’s early attempts to fashion some writing form her observations of the trial “Mrs Touchet was under the singular delusion – common at this stage of the process – that everything was connected.“

The style is best described as staccato despite its length. Some 455 pages are divided into 7 volumes and no less than 155 (at my estimation) chapters – so that the chapters are typically only 2-3 pages. To some extent I am sure that this is a nod to the serialisation of novels that was common at the time – Ainsworth even running his own literary journal where he not only published his own novels but added puff pieces about himself (something of a running joke in the novel). On one level it does work effectively to break up the text and to keep the reader actively engaged as consecutive chapters will often rove over decades – flitting from the trial to incidents much earlier in Eliza’s life. But this is also a book which does not always wear its research lightly – and too often I had the impression that a chapter was inserted so as to feature a particular piece of source material or researched incident.

Overall an enjoyable book – if perhaps not quite what I expected.

I wanted to really love this book because I think Zadie Smith is incredibly talented, but I just couldn't get invested in the characters. It's fabulously written, but I wasn't grabbed by the stories. It wouldn't stop me reading any of the author's future books, but this one wasn't for me.

‘The Fraud’ tells the fascinating true story of The Tichborne Trial of 1873 in which a man purporting to be the presumed deceased Sir Roger Tichborne returns to England to claim his property. Supported by Andrew Bogle, once a slave, it is the latter whom the court spectators admire for his humility and sincerity, even though his testimony in support of Sir Roger is rejected.
Whilst this event is at the centre of the narrative, arguably more interesting still is Zadie Smith’s depiction of William Ainsworth Harrison, a novelist as successful as Dickens in the 1830s, his Jack Sheppard even outselling Oliver Twist. However, the star of this novel is Mrs Eliza Touchet, Ainsworth’s cousin-companion and housekeeper. Through her, Zadie Smith explores the inherent difficulties of being an intelligent, liberal-minded, single woman in Victorian England. Mrs Touchet recognises that: ‘…she thought of herself as having several faces to show at different times to different people – as all women have, and must have, to varying degrees …’ And she realises that this, too, must be the case for Mr Bogle whose past experiences have been horrific and who now must meld into a society which has, until recently, supported these cruelties. Whilst some passages are difficult to read - the author never shies away from the brutality of the colonies - they are a necessary reminder of the very recent history.
Although the reader doesn’t have to be au fait with nineteenth century novelists to enjoy this story, it’s clear that Zadie Smith has had a lot of fun imagining her protagonists engaging with some of them and gossiping about their literary world. Mrs Touchet is not only a wise, introspective character; she also has a wicked sense of humour as demonstrated when Charles Dickens mutters a sarcastic comment ‘under his breath, amusing himself thoroughly. And mustn’t it be wonderful, thought Mrs Touchet, to be one’s own best entertainment.’ Over the years living with her cousin, she thinks a great deal about the nature of fiction and its effect on the public. When her cousin rails against George Eliot’s writing and asks, ‘‘Is this all that these modern ladies’ novels are to be about? People?’’ she replies ‘‘I like it’ and lifted a scone to her mouth, the better to obscure a smile.’ She recognises that, ‘the great majority of people turn out to be extraordinarily suggestible, with brains like sieves through which the truth falls.’ And, of course, this is still the case today as we see time and again through fake news stories pedalled by social media.
There’s a great deal to engage with in ‘The Fraud’. Zadie Smith is nothing if not a thought-provoking writer. Her talent for characterisation is here in abundance and her reminder that formerly enslaved people were very much part of nineteenth century England is an important addition in this ‘Victorian’ tale.
My thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

I enjoyed this novel, the first historical novel written by Zadie Smith, set in the early 19th century.

There are four intertwined storylines, the main protagonist is Eliza Touchet, a widow, and her life with her cousin-by-marriage and popular writer William Ainsworth, who is a contemporary of Dickens and enjoys initial successes but then his popularity and work fade; the Tichborne trial, a true-life case where a man arrives in the UK claiming that he is the missing and presumed dead Sir Roger Tichborne; this man is accompanied by Andrew Bogle, a former slave who knew Sir Roger as a child and is a witness at the trial.

Eliza is radical for a woman of her time, an abolitionist and interested in writing and politics. She has an unusual relationship with William and befriends Andrew. She sometimes becomes uncomfortably aware of the ways in which her life differs from Andrew's and also Sarah, William's ex-servant who is now his wife.

I enjoyed the novel a lot and despite its length it is a page turner, I was gripped by the story. But it isn't perfect, the intertwined narratives don't always mesh seamlessly together and as readers we are tantalized with glimpses of possible other threads - for example Dickens' interest in and relationship with Eliza that is only hinted at. It certainly made me think about freedom, what makes us free and the weirdness of human life.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

Zadie Smith’s ‘The Fraud’ follows Eliza Touchet, housekeeper and cousin-by-marriage to author William Harrison Ainsworth, as she, along with William’s new, young wife Sarah, becomes increasingly invested in a trial that consumes the headlines: a trial to determine whether, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the man claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne is telling the truth.

This novel is densely-packed and difficult to summarise, though that’s not to say that it’s particularly plot-driven. While the scenes following the trial and surrounding events are engaging, and take up a large portion of the novel, it’s clear that what is really of interest to the author is the opportunity this story provides to explore in depth a wide range of heavy themes - from class, to queerness, to womanhood, to slavery and the intrinsic human right to freedom. 

Smith examines class through the relationship between Eliza and Sarah, who is several decades her junior and who comes from a much less affluent background. The power imbalance between them is reversed in a key scene where Sarah takes Eliza to visit her old neighbourhood, and a “dolly shop” within it - to prove to Eliza that, while she might have gone through difficult times, she has no concept of what real poverty is, to demonstrate just how wide the class divide is and just how much people are truly struggling. It’s just one of several such scenes throughout the novel where Smith tackles a big idea in a small interaction, and makes an argument neatly and effectively.

The novel is perfectly structured, with the non-linear structure feeding you what you need to know at exactly the right moment, when it would be most impactful. It jumps around in time a lot, though is never difficult to follow or to place events relative to one another. Before events around the trial begin to feel repetitive, Smith shifts focus entirely for an extended period, bringing new depth to an important side character and to the novel at all.

This is a novel with a lot to say, and one that I think will age very well too. Important, timeless themes and ideas are addressed in a story that is constantly engaging and beautifully written. One climactic confrontation towards the end is so perfectly conceived and constructed that I think it’s destined to stick with me for a long time. If you’re on the fence about this book, I’d really recommend checking it out.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the e-ARC!

This reads to me like Smith's corrective to the 'fraud' of British Victorian history and literature that has traditionally been endemically white, which has written out so much about Caribbean slavery (as well as other predations of the Empire across the globe), about the abolitionist movement, even about the presence of non-white people in London and other British cities. It's only recently that this history is being prised open thanks to books like [book:Black and British: A Forgotten History|32809816] by [author:David Olusoga|4022846], colour-blind and Black casting in Victorian TV series (Sanditon, Bridgerton) - and Smith's novel serves as a much-needed parallel that re-writes the conventional Victorian novel so that its heart is the story of Mr Bogle and his descendants, trafficked from Africa, enslaved in Jamaica, brought to London to act as witness in the sensational Titchborne court case that itself is built on issues of identity, fraud and authenticity.

It takes some time to get our bearings in this book. The start offers up Mrs Eliza Touchet who seems like a conventional housekeeper in 'the big house' of a Victorian novelist and man of letters, William Harrison Ainsworth, friend and rivals with Charles Dickens. But Eliza has more going on beneath her surface: she's an abolitionist and activist who won't be cowed in discussions with Ainsworth's friends about the economic 'necessity' for slavery - and who also has rather subversive relationships with Ainsworth himself as well as his first and second wife. Her indictments of Dickens who makes a lot of money out of his sympathy for the poor and oppressed, and her friendship with Mr Bogle give her a perspective that is rare to find in actual Victorian fiction.

At times the narrative feels a bit bogged down and directionless but Smith's wit and sardonic sense of humour keep the pages turning, and the payoff, once we can see the shape of this book, is worth it. I found this deceptively easy to read but there's real substance here such as the scene where Eliza, ground down by establishment and authoritarian politics, listens to a choir made up of singers with all shades of skin and finds a moment of human transcendence.

I enjoyed this but I did find it slightly confusing to start off with - it's somewhat abrupt in starting and moving around the past - but Smith's writing is always sharp and enjoyable.

Not quite what I was expecting, and all the better for it. More a historical romp than a drama, with a bit of a Katherine Mansfield vibe throughout. Surely the lightest Zadie Smith to date, and more than likely to win her new fans. Definitely recommended. Thank you to NetGalley for this advance copy, given in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first Zadie Smith. It’s very refreshing to read a historical novel that focuses on the relationship between Britain and Jamaica. The characters are well drawn, and I enjoyed watching the book within a book progress. I’d happily recommend this book.

Zadie Smith's first historical novel takes as its subject the life of the Victorian novelist, William Harrison Ainsworth (best known for Rookwood) and one of the scandals of the age, the Tichborne case.

Through impeccable prose, Smith brings to life this fascinating tale, and into its swirl brings many faces and names that will be all too familiar to the lover of Victorian literature: Dickens, Cruickshank, Thackeray.

I felt fortunate to have received this book to review the day I did, having just started reading Ainsworth's follow up to Rookwood (a novel which gets a critical mauling here, and we'll deserved too!) One doesn't need to know the biographical details of this novelists life to appreciate this novel, though, as in Smith's deft hands we are bought into this world easily.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reading of this. Though it might disappoint her fans bought here by White Teeth or Swing Time (her two best novels, full of their insight into contemporary life), by the time she brings in the Tichborne case, you begin to understand why Smith was attracted to this history and why she felt it a story worth telling.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you very much. I am excited to read Zadie Smith doing historical fiction for the first time.

I will be sure to include it in chats to my followers. Especially as it's in the running for this year's Booker prize, a prize which I follow closely every year.