Faking

Thomas Wainewright - Regency fop, literary hanger-on, collector of art and artifacts, forger and deported felon - is considered one of the most notorious of English murderers. He is believed to have been one of the first recorded serial killers. James King takes on this spectral character in his first novel, Faking, and examines a number of serious questions. Was Wainewright a faker? It's historical "fact" that he forged sketches, paintings, letters and banknotes - but, more importantly, did he fake his life? In a complex tapestry of styles and voices, King plays with the assumptions of originality and experience, of academic fashions and biography. Told through the voice of a Toronto housewife, Thomas Wainewright's story is revealed through the voices of its main characters: the overly sensitive Tom, who wishes to address the characterizations of which he perceives himself to be victim (an essay by Wilde, a character in Dickens, a novel by Bulwer-Lytton); Tom's cunning wife, Eliza; his sister-in-law, Helen; and his son, Griffiths. Wainewright asserts his innocence of the murders (of his uncle, his mother-in-law, and his sister-in-law) but lays claim to the more fashionable - if not prestigious - guilt of forging a number of canvases, including Gainsborough's 'The Artist's Daughters', reproduced on the cover of this Simon & Pierre edition of Faking. With a deft hand, James King weaves together the language of the Regency with the language of contemporary prose (while knocking the academic conventions) to provide the reader with a novel that is sure to entertain and, at its end, cause a moment of reflection on the nature and importance of authenticity, of leading an authentic life.