Review: Leighan M Renaud
The Fraud, by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton/ Jonathan Ball)
Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, is her first foray into the world of historical fiction. The result is a stunning, well-studied examination of Victorian colonial England and some of its inhabitants.
As with other works by Smith, the novel takes a patchwork approach, with several interwoven plots taking place over a period of about 50 years. Centrally placed in the plot is the real-life and bizarre trial of a man claiming to be a Sir Roger Tichborne, thought to have died at sea and heir to a substantial fortune.
The absurd and very long trial, which had people from all communities in 1870s England hooked, is seen in the novel through the eyes of Eliza Touchet, cousin and companion of William Ainsworth, a novelist well known in Victorian England but relatively forgotten today. Continue reading