Fraud was published by Jonathan Cape in 1992. Anna Durrant has gone missing — or rather, her doctor has noticed that she hasn’t come for her appointment, and her absence has triggered questions that reveal how completely she existed in other people’s lives without being seen by any of them.
The novel is structured as a kind of investigation — not a detective story (there is no crime, or rather the “crime” is social rather than legal) but an inquiry into how a person can be present in a community for years and remain essentially unknown. Anna’s acquaintances — her doctor, a former friend, her mother’s companions — are questioned, and each reveals a version of Anna that reflects their own needs rather than Anna’s reality. She was dutiful; she was self-effacing; she was always available; she never made demands. She was, in other words, exactly what everyone wanted her to be, and the “fraud” of the title is not Anna’s deception of others but others’ willingness to accept a performance of selflessness without ever asking whether a self lay beneath it.
Brookner’s analysis is devastating: the novel shows how a woman trained from childhood to serve others can become so accomplished at self-effacement that she literally disappears — not into death (the mystery is resolved undramatically) but into invisibility. The fraud is the social contract that rewards women for being undemanding and then punishes them by failing to notice when they are gone.
Collecting Fraud
First edition (Jonathan Cape, London, 1992): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Very good: $8–$20