I’m really sorry to say I’ve had to DNF this one- I was really excited to read Zadie Smiths new book as I loved on beauty. I was especially excited that it is a historical fiction and had expectations of a modern day classic. However, I’ve tried to persevere with it and reached 30% on kindle and I am still none the wiser as to what’s going on. She has not set the scene at all. It feels like someone has got lots of chapters from all different books and stuck them together. It is not clear who the characters are or their relation to one another and there is no clear story line. I love Smiths descriptive narrative but none of this book makes sense. I hate to give such a negative review but I have to be honest and really cannot continue with it.

True story and historical fiction are brought to life neatly and comprehensively by Zadie Smith, as you follow the story of Eliza Touchet and her irrepressible cousin, the Victorian novelist William Ainsworth.

This is a wonderful exploration of so many themes and issues of the time, seen through the filter of Eliza, it's funny and lively and also very sad in some places.

Zadie Smith has come up with a treasure of a book here, with depth and interest and thoughtfulness - really enjoyable

The Fraud, Zadie Smith's first historical novel, is based on a real event - the Tichborne trial, a controversial trial of the Victorian age.
This is a thought-provoking book which explores a number of serious themes. It is not, however, without humour and wit. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of real-life Victorian literary figures.
Zadie Smith writes beautifully and has a talent for creating believable characters.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

I'm very excited to see Zadie Smith diving into historical fiction, and this didn't disappoint at all. I haven't been so gripped by a book in a long time. Once I got going with this I couldn't stop reading.
At first I was worried that with so many characters, and so much jumping around in time, that I wouldn't be able to keep up, especially with the short length of the chapters. But Smith juggles everything perfectly.
There's a lot packed into this wonderful novel and I'm excited to read it again. I feel I'll get more out of it with each reading.

Zadie Smith’s first historical novel is set in the 1800s and is a real departure from her previous books. The novel is, as you’d expect from a writer of Smith’s talent, brilliant. It’s a captivating, thought-provoking novel that I highly recommend.

Eliza Touchet is a Scottish woman living in her cousin (by marriage) as his housekeeper at a time when society restricts her choices, both personally and professionally. Her cousin, William Ainsworth, is a novelist churning out terrible books that earn him derision.

Eliza becomes enthralled, as most of Victorian Britain seems to have done, by a court case called The Titchborne Claimant. Richard Titchborne, an English gentleman, had disappeared years previously but a man living in Australia claimed he was Richard Titchborne and had a right to his inheritance.

Andrew Bogle was enslaved on a Jamaican plantation owned by the Titchborne’s before being brought to England to work for the family and was a key witness at the trial.

Smith uses these interlocking stories to examine several themes, the most interesting of which for me was about freedom and every person’s right to be free. I felt too that the ‘fraud’ of the title could be applied to many characters in the book, not just the potential fraudster claiming to be Richard Titchborne. Each character is perhaps deluding or lying to themselves or others in some way, not always through deliberate deception.

I loved the tone and style of the novel, with unexpected funny moments throughout. Eliza in particular is written vividly and with a real sense of her inner life. Thanks to @netgalley for my copy of The Fraud - its a book that I'll read again and again.

The Tichborne case controversy and the life of Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, well known for his work on Rookwood, are the subjects of Zadie Smith's debut historical fiction book. This is a story of identity and deception.

The Tichborne Trial was a famous court case that took place in England in the late 1800s. The trial was about a man named Arthur Orton who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, a wealthy Englishman who had disappeared years earlier. However, many people believed that Orton was an imposter and not the real Sir Roger Tichborne.

It was a trial that captivated the entire country, including Smith's main character, a widowed Scottish housekeeper and cousin-by-marriage to author William Harrison Ainsworth named Mrs. Eliza Touchet.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman who has many interests. She loves literature, justice, abolitionism, class, and even believes in the afterlife. However, she is also very skeptical. She believes that England is a land of facades, where nothing is quite what it seemed. She is very interested in the Tichborne Trial because she wants to know the truth about whether Orton is really Sir Roger Tichborne or not.

Andrew Bogle is a witness in the trial, and his future depended on telling the right story. He grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation in Jamaica, and he knows that every lump of sugar came at a human cost. He believes that the rich deceived the poor and that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. Bogle's testimony is crucial in the trial, and he has to make sure that he tells the truth.

The trial is a reminder that the truth is not always easy to uncover and that people can be easily deceived.

'The Fraud' offers a lot of engaging material. Zadie Smith is a writer who consistently provokes thought. Her gift for developing characters shines through in this story, and her reminder that people who had been held as slaves were an integral part of nineteenth-century England is a crucial touch to the story.

This narrative also offers the opportunity to deeply examine a variety of serious subjects, including class, queerness, femininity, and as already said; slavery, and the inalienable right to freedom.

This book is a true gem that will remain relevant for years to come. Its message is powerful and thought-provoking, beautifully written, with vivid descriptions and engaging characters that will draw you in from the very first page.

One of the things that makes this book so special is the way it addresses significant, timeless issues and concepts.

I wanted to love this book as I have loved Zadie Smith's previous novels. To be honest I didn't look at the blurb before starting to read it - if I had, I would have realised that the genre is not for me. I enjoy some historical fiction, especially if there is a current timeline which ties in with the historical narrative. But this book is deeply historical, entirely based in the 1800s and written pretty much in the style of a period drama (which I also don't like). The chapters are extremely short and in other novels I have enjoyed this as it helps to move the narrative along at pace. But this wasn't the case with this book, I found the storyline slow and was sometimes at a loss regarding the actual plot.

So this was not for me. But if you enjoy this genre, I am sure many will rate the book a five star read.

Many thanks to NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a surprise.

I am not sure what I was expecting but it certainly was not this!

A total departure from her previous works, The Fraud’ covers the fascinating 19th century Tichborne Trial of 1873 linked together with the author's account of the best selling novelist William Ainsworth Harrison and his companion Eliza Touchet.

What follows is an accurate of sad analysis of the lot of Victorian women at a time of subservience to men.

It is long and hard going at times but well worth persevering with as nothing written by this brilliant author is worth reading.

I am a huge fan of Zadie Smith so really enjoyed this book. I love her writing and her first historical novel doesn’t disappoint. The characters are beautifully drawn with a sly sense of humour which lifts the book above an average historical novel. Eliza Touchet, the rather bad tempered heroine, presided over the book with withering observations and dry humour.
I’m not sure I enjoyed it as much as her modern novels but it was an interesting and insightful read about the Victorian era.

This was an interesting work of historical fiction. I didn't know anything about the Tichborne trial and I enjoyed following it through the eyes of Eliza Touchet, the housekeeper to her writer cousin. I did feel that some of the book was quite disjointed and hard to keep up with the different stands, but it is worth the read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review of the book.

This is a departure for Zadie Smith; a slice of Victoriana centred around the Tichbourn affair and focusing on Mrs Eliza Touchet. Other supporting characters are Eliza’s cousin the author William Harrison Ainsworth a Victorian era novelist and Andrew Bogle a former slave.

Essentially this is three stories in one novel; Mrs Touchet and her cousin Ainsworth, the Tichbourn trial and the story of Andrew Bogle. I’m not wholly convinced this set of storylines work together – they remain completely separate threads and to an extent they feel like three good ideas jammed together but the result being less than the sum.
The Mrs Touchet line hops in time in a slightly odd way, bouncing between the novel’s present and a period 30-40 years earlier.

The trial is all about the trial but its oddly intercut with Mrs Touchet past or present and the Bogle thread is interesting and provides a window into slavery and how all of society is tarnished by it but, as a storyline it feels insubstantial and unbalanced against the trial and Ainsworth/ Mrs Touchet.

Had the book focused just on Mrs Touchet and her perspective on Ainsworth, the trial and slavery abolition it might have had more momentum. Mrs T is an engaging narrator, observant and aware of her failings.
Overall although the book is well written and in parts is entirely hooking it feels like it would have benefited from more rigorous editing. It feels like a long book, the pacing seems off and I was not sorry to finish it.

Finally there were formatting issues with the ebook that spoilt the reading experience.

What a wonderful book, I expected nothing less though. So interesting and captivating. The characters were and are so rich in history and have seeded interests in this era of history that I am grateful for. Thanks

Really interesting. I didn't know anything about the Tichborne trial and I enjoyed following it through the eyes of Eliza Touchet, housekeeper to her writer cousin William Ainsworth. The structure was somehow hard to follow at times with many flashbacks to the main character's first years living with her cousin and his late wife, mixed with the current events and the trial. It felt well researched and promoted me to read more about the trial, which was really interesting. I wish there had been more about characters involved in the trial, like Bogle the witness, who remains mysterious despite a brief chapter.

The Fraud

This is an historical novel by Zadie Smith with one Eliza Touchet as its conduit through whom a complex set of stories are told.

There is the continuing story of Eliza’s cousin, by marriage, William Harrison Ainsworth a Victorian era novelist. I am willing to bet I am one of only a few reviewers of this novel who has actually read one of his books, Ovingdean Grange, which is a fanciful telling how the future King Charles II stayed at a house in Ovingdean, near Brighton, for less than 24 hours before escaping to France in 1651. Ainsworth has him fathering a child in the process. King Charles is reported to have sheltered in the chimney breast of the master bedroom. Not well written and highly unlikely.

I enjoyed parts of the novel relating to Ainsworth and his literary friends, Dickens, Thackeray, John Foster who are all mentioned. But I was aware as I read that this was all imagined, if based loosely on ‘facts’. And Smith does not portray Ainsworth as likeable, or even knowledgable, but rather blind to all of Eliza’s concerns such as abolition and the role of women.

Then there is an interwoven second story of The Tichborn Claimant which, again, is told through the eyes of Eliza Touchet. This was a true and sensational Victorian court case where the ‘Claimant’ claimed money and land due to the heir of the Tichborn estate. It is a story which seems to have it all – a broken heart, fraud, death, cattle-rustling, and a mother’s delusional love. Its popularity was so great that it sparked the mania ‘Tichbornia’ for all things relating to it which Smith describes well. Again, enjoyable reading.

The third story is shorter and concerns Andrew Bogle a former slave at a plantation in Jamaica who then worked for the Tichborn estate for many years before retiring. He claimed to recognise the Claimant. This allows Smith to express views on slavery through her characters:

We are all guilty of supporting and perpetuating slavery. The West Indian planter and the people of this country stand in the same moral relation to each other as the thief and receiver of stolen goods . .

The novel has short chapters and darts around between different time periods and different story lines. It is too long and could have done with some cutting. It is easy to criticise Ainsworth for his distortion of historical facts, a sort of faction, but I feel Smith, too, falls into this trap although a far better writer and, I hope that I detected, with a great deal more irony. The main example of tampering with facts might be Eliza finding Ainsworth’s dead body, as Smith writes:

Mrs Touchet – a woman always partly phantasmagoric – extends herself far beyond her earthly span here: in reality, she died before her cousin, on the 4th of February 1869, just before William moved to Hurstpierpoint.

Ainsworth died in 1882.

I read a copy provided by NetGalley and the publishers.

A fascinating story, but a little too long winded at times.  I persevered because I love Zadie Smith but if this was written by anyone else I likely would have given up.  Historical fiction in not my natural genre and I imagine this is the reason why I couldn't fully connect with the writing.  I think it took too long for the plot to really come out, but I do think if historical fiction is your go-to genre this book would be far more enjoyable.

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!