This is easily the most historical of any Zadie Smith I've ever read and I was intrigued to see her delve into that genre after I so loved all her contemporary fiction. The character she builds around the semi-anonymous Mrs. Touchet for whom Dickens signed a book is layered and fascinating. There's proto-feminism, there's the seeds of white guilt, there's an (inner) embracing of her sexuality. She's both subservient to Ainsworth and his dominatrix; being down-on-her-luck and female seals her fate, but she clearly sees the foibles of the coterie of literary men Ainsworth associates with. As for the titular fraud, ostensibly Sir Roger Tichborne, his trial really brings to light a kind of popular discontent that rings all too familiar to 2024 ears. Here is a man who purports to be an aristocrat, and yet the masses close ranks around him in the face of rejection by the real nobility. They even (whoa) raise funds, sometimes through dubious schemes (whoa × 2) to pay for his legal expenses. I mean...

All in all, grade-A Zadie Smith, right here. I love her. The end.