We discuss sensationalism, the malleability of truth, and how her fiction — set in the 19th century — feels surprisingly current.
Zadie Smith’s The Fraud is a historical novel, her first. It’s a book about London, about history, about classism and authorship and truth. It is also about a 60-ish
Of course, our three resident bibliophiles and self-professed Zadie Smith fans were going to read it. Spoilers ahead.
Dan Ahwa: The last book I read from Zadie Smith was her brief collection of six essays from the pandemic — Intimations — so The Fraud, at a whopping 464 pages, was a stonker of a book to get through.
Emma Gleason: It’s very readable though, with short chapters — some only a couple of pages long — that help set a clipper pace that makes for a brisk reading tempo.
Julia Gessler: Smith once again proves the intelligence of her writing — it’s clipt in length, sure, but there’s a magic to her ability to distill a kind of acutely cohesive, at times very funny, narration to such few lines, endlessly.
How did you feel about it being historical fiction?
DA: I like watching historical dramas, but not necessarily reading about them. However, Zadie’s short chapters and snappy dialogue made this a surprisingly fun and boisterous read. The pace of it, the obsession with social graces, the collage of British literary tropes and the inquiry of what a novelist represents made it an interesting medley of themes that worked together really well.
EG: Historical fiction is one of my favourite genres, so it’s been a delight to read something of this ilk from the sensational Zadie Smith, who I adore. It feels surprisingly current, in the sense that you feel immersed in the era and the characters feel alive. The subject matter of the plot is also very relevant to our current social and media landscape.
DA: Did either of you connect with any of the characters? While I found it tricky to invest in any one particular character at times because there was a lot going on — from the Tichborne trial to a commentary on the British colonial slave trade, and even a sidebar on Victorian BDSM — I did find the way Zadie unpacked the character of Eliza the most compelling to read about. I liked her sense of independence — but to a point.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.EG: Eliza was intriguing. I appreciated that all the characters were flawed, and that those flaws had evolved and calcified over the course of their lives — for example, the naivety and hubris of the young William Ainsworth compared to his bitterness in later life were two halves of the same coin, wrought by one life; “that handsome young buck,” Smith writes, “hair slick with Macassar oil, had somehow become this whiskery, jowly, dejected, old man.” Mrs Touchet “stayed where she was, observing her portly, bearded cousin, all youthful beauty fled from him.”
What did you think of William Ainsworth?
JG: He was in some respects the vehicle for a lot of the novel’s humour, a fragile, bumbling expense to the spikier Eliza, but he wasn’t two-dimensional.
DA: At some points, he was very endearing.
EG: He never became a punch line right? Smith’s characterisation is so human, with behavioural observations and subtle asides that render these people as so real (something not all historical fiction manages). There was an almost pantomime quality to some characters, which I think worked well and had quite a Dickensian effect. But her pen never feels judgemental.
JG: Now, the trial.
EG: The trial!
DA: The Tichborne case itself was a great addition from the author and really displayed the type of media spectacle that stems from high-profile trials, like a precursor to Anna Delvey. Who doesn’t love the story of a populist hero?
EG: It’s very “now”, right? As is the malleability of truth. I think it was a canny way to show that this kind of spectacle is nothing new, nor is media partisanship. People have always fought about news reporting, picked sides and treated stories as a vessel on which to project their personal experience and values.
DA: There are a lot of similarities to issues being faced today, including heated debates about race and classism, which was confronting to read. It reminded me of another great read this year, Yellowface by R. F. Kuang.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.EG: The conspiracy theories, criticism of elites, sensationalism, and information sources. By transporting contemporary issues and themes to the 19th century, Smith gives the reader a lens and distance with which to critique what’s going on now.
I also think she masters a rather self-reflective perspective on authorship and voicing the lives of others. It’s something Smith has discussed in interviews before, as the literary world increasingly grapples with the idea of authenticity and appropriation.
JG: The start of one chapter feels particularly pointed: “The world is so much, and so various, and all the time — how can it be contained?”
“Language?” the narrator wonders.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton, $37) is out now.
We sit down to discuss the new and notable.
Everything We Thought After Reading Paris Hilton’s Memoir. We discuss the heiress, the chaos of the aughts, and the early internet.
Everything We Thought After Reading ‘Pineapple Street’ By Jenny Jackson. We discuss the wealth, moralism and family drama of the WASP-y Stockton family.
Everything We Thought While Reading Eleanor Catton’s ‘Birnam Wood’. Three of Viva’s bookworms set out to read the ecological thriller.
