Every chapter helps to peel back another layer to get to the root, the starting point I suppose, of how Jule ends up in the situation which we, as readers, first find her – falsely going by the name Imogen and seemingly on the run in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico but, for what reason, we aren’t told. However, I should have had more faith in the author and trust that it was necessary, and it was.

The story is told in reverse order, a tactic which, I’ll admit, at first I thought was a mere gimmick. “The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.” From the very first paragraph readers get the impression that a) nothing Jule says can be taken as gospel truth, and b) she plays at being Jule just as much as the other identities she tries on over the course of the story. We learn she runs without listening to music, she speaks in “BBC English”, she loves Dickens… and she introduces herself as Imogen. So begins the theme of the book – from the very beginning (indeed even in the oxymoronic nature of the title) we are taught, as readers, to be wary of what front Jule presents to the world, to her friends, and even to herself. During this short conversation between two strangers, we are introduced to Jule’s life story – or, rather, the life story she tells people. Genuine Fraud concerns itself with Jule West Williams, a young woman who we first meet seemingly living the high life (of sorts) in a hotel in Baja, though we first “see her” exercising on the treadmill of the hotel she’s staying in, and subsequently befriending a woman on the treadmill beside hers. This guy Goffman had the idea that in different situations, you perform yourself differently. “The presentation of self in everyday life. Lockhart’s books are best experienced with this level of wilful ignorance, and I’d agree this is certainly the case with Genuine Fraud. I will therefore try my very best in the subsequent review to not spoil anything regarding this book that hasn’t been covered anyway by the synopsis or press surrounding it. A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.”Īs you may be able to glean from the synopsis of this book, Genuine Fraud really is a book best approached knowing next to nothing about the story within – many of E.

A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.

Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete. “Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.

Genuine fraud book