Before starting to read this book, I considered doing some research on William Ainsworth. All in all, Ainsworth was a contemporary writer. He was a clean stylist and published 41 novels. His first success as a writer came with Rookwood in 1834 and Jack Sheppard, which did outsell the Oliver Twist.
This novel is based on the life of William (1805-82) from the point of view of his cousin by marriage, Eliza Touchet. Her husband left her in poverty with William's household. It is written through time and anecdotes that struck her as significant moments and some meaningless from the outside literary world.
Eliza is incredibly brave, brilliant, loving, and kind. She gives a very fair and balanced view of the scandal that titillated Victorian England, The Tichborne Claimant cases. In 1852, Roger Charles Tichborne, heir to the Tichborne title, disappeared at sea. Twelve years later, Tom Castro, a large Cockney butcher from Wagga Wagga in outback Australia claimed to be him. But she was more obsessed with a formerly enslaved Jamaican man named Andrew Bogle, a key witness in the trial of the Tichborne Claimant. Zadie does very good work with the story of sympathetic characters, race, class and colonisation complexities.
Thanks to @times.reads and @putrifariza for the review copy. Opinions are my own 💙
*Available at all major bookstores in Singapore and Malaysia and their online stores
📚
#donereading #TheFraud by #ZadieSmith #igreads #igbooks #bookstagram #goodreads #bookrecommendations #bookreview #emabaca #malaysiamembaca