In 1873, Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world; Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. 

I haven’t read any other books by Smith, and I definitely want to after this book as I love Smith’s writing. I was particularly impressed by Smith’s ability to write Ainsworth’s passages, which came across as so terribly rambling that it was funny. The clever writing was definitely the best thing about this book. I was enraptured with the book’s description and thought it had a lot of potential, but I think it felt a little bit short for me for a few reasons. First of all, there were a superfluous amount of characters, and I had trouble from time to time distinguishing who was who and remembering which history belong to which character. Secondly, the book was not written chronologically, which usually does not bother me. However, for whatever reason, I struggled to keep track of events as I was reading this and felt that I was being thrown around in the timeline. I think this also led to the book not really having much momentum, which caused me to lose interest, particularly towards the end. Overall the book felt a bit disjointed, which was a shame because that really distracted from the brilliant writing and what could have been a fascinating plot.