'The Fraud' by Zadie Smith

The Fraud, Zadie Smith (3.5)

I enjoyed this book – though with some caveats. I love the way Ms. Smith uses words and I was delighted to find out the characters in this book were all real people (figured it out when Charles Dickens enters the scene). The story follows a widow who lives with her husband’s cousin, a hack writer and peer of Dickens. She is a burgeoning abolitionist who follows a real trial of an alleged impersonator of a lost Lord. The trial is riveting as the person is obviously not of the peerage, but the common men and women are convinced (many have compared this to MAGA conspiracies). What I didn’t enjoy about the book was the very long telling of one character’s backstory. Part of it was important to the story, but it really took the reader out of it for too long. I also didn’t appreciate the use of time jumps – these seem to be the trend in current writing – but I found it quite jarring and hard to follow in the beginning.