Fraudsters Abound

Tom Rachman isn’t trying to be coy in The Imposters. Its protagonist, Dora Frenhofer, a writer increasing in age while diminishing in relevance, opines early in the novel that “readers want a book to add up to something, not to some things. So I must tie these people together. Maybe the manuscript could be about writing itself? Or about writers?” For Dora, tying “these people” together is just as much for her sake as for her would-be readers. Her characters are a diverse cast of imposters, including family members, former lovers, friends, and other loose acquaintances who hail from Los Angeles, London, Paris, Copenhagen, and Delhi, among other places. Dora struggles to wrangle these unruly imposters into a cohesive manuscript while she tries to weave the strands of her life into some kind of sensible tapestry under the threat of dementia’s oblivion.

The narrative bounces back...