I really didn’t like it! I’ve read Smith’s [piece](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/on-killing-charles-dickens) in the NYT and [this](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/06/1197979380/historical-fiction-the-fraud-is-about-a-mans-testimony-of-outrageous-obvious-lie) NPR interview, and I’ll listen to her Fresh Air episode now that I’ve finished the book. I appreciate the amount of research that she did for this piece of historical fiction, and I like the focus on the evolving equal rights movement that was occurring during the Victorian era.
As a novel though, I felt like the book was resisting me the whole time I was reading it. The the main plot is the Tichborne trial, but it takes a backseat to Eliza’s narration, which is a jumbled-up remembrance of her long life, and her yearning for freedom which doesn’t even begin to get realized until the last thirty pages of the novel.
Also, what’s up with the BDSM-lite?
Have you finished it? Did you like it?
by sarahkatherin