The Fraud: A Novel

Zadie Smith reminds me of David Foster Wallace insofar as her fiction reads as deliberate — even laborious at times — whereas her essays and criticism are effortlessly & enviably brilliant. Of all her novels, this one comes closest to joining the two voices. The diffuse structure gives color and weight to what might otherwise be a thin story, yet never has she explored her preoccupations with the difficulties of self-knowledge and knowledge of others (and the Other) with such pointedness, irony, and empathy. I loved it.