The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Saturday, May 25, 2024--San Antonio

The Fraud by Zadie Smith was not an easy read for me.  Parts of the book were very interesting, but I ran into comprehension problems due to two factors: 1)  Chapters are designated by dates and they jump forwards and backwards over and over again.  I couldn't keep the dates in mind as to what was happening when, so with each jump I had to try to figure out from text what story I was returning to.  2)  So many names (characters) to remember made it difficult to keep track of who was who.  This was further complicated by similar names such as Emily and Eliza within the same family/home.  Written around the life of a real-life novelist from the 1800s who is unknown today and was mostly a disappointment to himself then (although he thought more highly of himself than most others did), the book is really mostly about his female cousin by marriage who came to live with him when her husband (the author's brother) died at a young age.  Among other things, she was a feminist and enjoyed "scandalous" sexual activities which included S&M and more.  She sat in the parlor with her cousin/author and his follow authors and friends (including Charles Dickens) and participated in their intellectual discussions at a time when most women were expected to be in another room with only woman and to leave the men to be only with men.  She had affairs with both her cousin by marriage and with his wife with neither of them realizing it.  She was apparently bisexual, but she wondered at times if maybe she was a lesbian (which she referenced as being a "Lady of Llangollen" because of a town in Wales where lesbians apparently were known to live).  There is so much more to this book, however--the story of a trial of a man who was thought to have drowned when his ship sank but has returned from Australia claiming to be the heir of an estate (or was he a butcher from a lower class area of London?).  The story of a former slave from Jamaica and his son.  The stories of the jealousies between authors of the time.  Etc.  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5.