Zadie Smith’s new novel, The Fraud, is a Dickensian delight. Not only is it set in 19th century England with a sprawling cast of characters high and low, but Charles Dickens himself makes an appearance, charming everyone except those who envy his success

As with other works by Smith, the novel takes a patchwork approach, with several interwoven plots taking place over a period of about 50 years. Centrally placed in the plot are the real-life and highly bizarre trials of a man, Arthur Orton, a butcher with a shadowy past, claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, thought to have been killed at sea and heir to a substantial fortune

The evidence against the butcher seems overwhelming: he can’t remember his supposed classmates, can’t recall basic facts of a gentleman’s education and cannot even speak French, Tichborne’s first language. More damning, details about his ‘missing years’ at sea are shown to be false. And yet for many thousands of devoted fans, the very audaciousness of his claim argues in its favour. His claim becomes a populist cause despite there being very little evidence on his side. Hence, The Fraud

The absurd and very long trials, which have people from all communities in 1870s England hooked, is seen in the novel through the eyes of Eliza Touchet, cousin and companion of William Ainsworth, a novelist well known in Victorian England but sunk in obscurity today

Touchet — she pronounces it the French way — is observant and astringent, tall and imposing. If she’s the kind of character who might only get a walk-on in Victorian novels, here her sharp voice is a constant companion. “William had not written a word of his novel since February,” she notices. “Besides, the writing of novels — even good ones — did not seem, to Mrs. Touchet, a rational response to a financial crisis”

Eliza is even less remembered that William historically, memorialised largely through some letters and a signed copy of a Dickens novel. However, Smith breathes life anew into them both and through them, a portrait of Victorian England’s literary scene is painted

Through Touchet, we witness the hypocrisy of her environment – the nepotism, the false friends, the pretence, the fraud. Through her is also a fictional account of the campaign for the abolition of slavery which, though taken very seriously by Touchet and the campaigners she encounters, is reduced to an intellectual exercise at the dinner parties of the literary middle class

The novel has several disparate threads: First, there is the decades-long tale of Ainsworth’s literary life and home, then the sensational trial that captivates the public. Add to this the distant trade in enslaved people, layered over with Touchet’s own closely held secrets. That the entire tapestry flows so seamlessly across decades, weaving in shared intimacies, massive crowd scenes and dusty literary gossip, is a testament to Smith’s craft

But of course, a good title is never about just one thing. Is a successful novelist, one who can (briefly) outsell Dickens, kidding himself about the quality of his work? What might trouble a nice white lady’s dedicated support of abolition and the much-delayed end of slavery in the British colony of Jamaica? If a sexually liberated woman presents herself merely as a buttoned-up house manager, is there something false about that facade?

In her private life, Mrs. Touchet is modern in her appetites. She has lovers, male and female. The best and most poignant sections of The Fraud examine the highly prescribed space for a sharp, smart woman in a culture that has no interest in sharp, smart women, particularly a dependent one of a certain age with little money. Eliza cannot be honest about her cousin’s novels; she cannot be open about her sexuality; she cannot pursue her own interest in writing

Of particular interest to her is Andrew Bogle, a formerly enslaved Jamaican who insists under rigorous cross-examination that the rotund butcher is definitely the man he once knew as Roger Tichborne. As a righteous abolitionist, Eliza feels certain that Bogle is sincere yet somehow wrong. Her reaction raises a host of fascinating issues about whose testimony is valid, whose life story is reliable and, of course, how race and class determine those calculations. Even the structure of The Fraud, which makes Bogle a character in Eliza’s amateur investigation, dares us to marginalize him and the suffering of Jamaicans yet again

Smith continually works against expectations. The Fraud excels at sleight of hand, the syncopated arrangement of short chapters jumping back and forth in time, placing Ainsworth’s youthful popularity in contrast to his later years of panicked self-doubt. But the focus remains on the mysterious Eliza Touchet — so externally polite, so internally acute — struggling till the end of her life to divine what to believe when the human condition is essentially fraudulent