The Fraud
By Zadie Smith
I saw this new one on the shelves of the Sherburne Library, I thought I'd give it a shot.
The book is set in 19th century England. One of its focal points is the trial of a man, long thought dead in a shipwreck, to be the heir to a fortune. Is he "Sir Roger" or just a regular working-class resident of the village in which Sir Roger lived?
But that's not the only possible fraud. We see the trial through the eyes of Eliza. After a disastrous marriage, she now lives with, and is dependent upon, her distant cousin, William, a once-distinguished author desperately trying to revive his reputation -- and sales. Privately, Eliza, who was once William's lover, can't stand his writing. In her mind, he, too, is a fraud. Then again, she, too, is living a lie. She props up William's ego, aware of her precarious position. And during her younger trysts, Eliza had fallen in love with William's wife, whose own heart we never truly learn about. Finally, there is Eliza's income. She has been a firm abolitionist for decades, yet is dependent upon a yearly stipend from her former husband's family that was built on the slave trade. When she learns she is eligible to double this income -- a sum that would finally grant her independence from William -- she declines it on these grounds. But she cannot relinquish the rest of the money.
Maybe, though, it is society at large that is the fraud. Eliza comes away from Sir Roger's trial with a sense that the English legal system is not designed to hand down justice so much as it is to preserve the social order. In other words, the question becomes: What is the true fraud of the title?
I certainly became engrossed in the story, and very much appreciated the rapid-fire chapters, some of which lasted just a few pages. Things kept moving, even when time shifted backward. But the book did seem a bit bereft of plot. Three hundred pages in, and I was still wondering: when is something going to happen?
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