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hannahleewhite's review
challenging
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia
bessjoyce's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Interesting but dfficult to connect with characters and be compelled to pick it up. Lots of casual fatphobia.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery
Moderate: Fatphobia, Racial slurs, and Racism
dafni's review against another edition
Short and confusing chapters, difficult to follow. The stories are not very coherent and the characters have no depth so far, so it’s really hard to connect with the book at any level. Maybe it’s not a good period to read this book, or maybe it’s a poor example of Zadie Smith’s work. I certainly did not want to compulsively finish it without being as interested as I would hope to be.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism
Moderate: Fatphobia
knkoch's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I confess myself disappointed. I was looking forward to this one because I’ve heard great things, but even more, heard that this was Zadie Smith’s nineteenth century novel acting as a sort of rebuttal to Charles Dickens. I’ve seen articles where she critiques his excess sentimentality, and discusses her choice to make Dickens a character in her book. I’m rather fond of Dickens’ work, and while that gives me some bias, I came to this with an open mind ready to hear what I saw as her counterpoint.
The Fraud is laid out in very short chapters spread across many ‘volumes’ within the book, likely to echo the serialization that Dickens and other authors of his time employed to release their books piecemeal to their readers in monthly periodicals. The short (1-3 page) chapters made it very easy to keep reading, but the overall structure of the book felt difficult to follow. The narrative jumps back and forth constantly between the 1830s and 1870s, following MC Eliza in her life as housekeeper to her author cousin W. Harrison Ainsworth. I could see Smith was layering multiple meanings on the idea of frauds, which remains interesting, but the plot didn’t have a strong arc for me. Some of the ‘mysteries’ seemed pretty unmysterious fairly early on, or strangely buried and unresolved.
And so, falling back on the characters, I was further disappointed. Only about 4-5 had true depth and empathy, with most of the secondary characters painted as caricatures. They were stupid, loud, drunken, or, especially, fat. There was a disconcerting amount of fatphobia, with fatness made to be an indicator of negative or immoral qualities in multiple characters. The amount of poking and sneering at fatness here was on the level of JK Rowling’s treatment of the Dursleys in HP. I’ve been noticing this way more in writing lately and I just hate when authors do this. Maybe it was meant to indicate the MC’s judgmental view of others, but it was a bummer to read over and over.
Dickens wrote characters with shades of these and other negative qualities, but almost always with some warmth or humor and rarely with the sort of predetermined judgement Smith did here. You wouldn’t want to borrow money, overly rely on, or move in with some Dickens characters, but few come off so distinctly unpleasant and devoid of charm as many characters in The Fraud. I’d much rather make up my own mind about people than be told whether they’re of value or not.
I do appreciate that Smith built a story on race, slavery, the sugar trade, and money. Race in particular is not a subject I’ve yet to come across in Dicken’s work, and certainly his disinterest or plain unacknowledgment is a failing of his, not uncommon for White writers of his generation. He likely did not care to pay attention racism and Britain’s imperial role in the slave trade. I appreciate that Smith corrects this, and interrogates the British colonial impact on Jamaica and living conditions for enslaved and affected people of color at this time of British history. It’s a story worth investigating and illuminating. I just wish the novel had spent more time in that zone. Much more of it seemed to be about the central trial, naturally, and lampooning the triviality of the white literary scene of the time which, sure, easy pickings, but was not necessarily as compelling or connected to the colonialism sections.
I am not so very interested in Dickens the man. I’ve no doubt his flaws and biases run deep, and are worth confronting and examining, but I’m also not invested in lionizing his character. I’m interested in how his work makes me feel: flayed and alive to the enormity of life. His work lived far beyond him, impacting not only his own time but echoing on through the decades. Some of that is because of the way we have lauded and exalted certain White writers endlessly, to the detriment of other diverse then-contemporary voices that never got deserved recognition. And yet. Dickens’ stories, though they’re set in 1800s Britain, metaphorically and thematically remind me of the time I live in now, and the people I’ve met. The struggles his characters underwent can still occur in new forms, as Barbara Kingsolver so recently demonstrated in Demon Copperhead. The Fraud wasn’t terrible, though I would be very interested to discuss this book with someone for whom it resonated with more. The bleak characters and less than clear message wearied rather than stimulated me. But obviously, I am a Dickens defender and likely have blindspots there, which I am trying to continuously confront. I will keep reading more by Zadie Smith in hopes of understanding her voice better than I did here.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia
Moderate: Racial slurs and Slavery