Editorial Content for The Complicities
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Reviewer (text)
For years, Suzanne blithely looked the other way, professing ignorance about financial matters as her family prospered thanks to her husband Alan’s illegal and unethical mismanagement of other people’s life savings (think Bernie Madoff here). After Alan’s crimes catch up with him and he’s put in white-collar prison, newly divorced Suzanne is desperate for a fresh start. So she moves to a small town on the less prosperous side of Cape Cod and --- using her maiden name --- starts working as a bartender and a massage therapist (despite the fact that her only “license” was a print-at-home souvenir of a dubious online course).
"Filled with incisive observations of the human and natural worlds alike, THE COMPLICITIES is a beautifully novelistic exploration of profound ethical questions."
Suzanne, who’s estranged from her young adult son, ignores the phone calls that otherwise would have alerted her to the fact that Alan is being released early due to good behavior. But by the time that happens, she already has been drawn into a drama of a very different type. A rare right whale has washed up on the beach outside of town. Suzanne becomes captivated by the attempts to save its life and obsessed with finding a solution so it won’t happen again. In doing so, she makes her own financial choice, one that ostensibly serves to salve her own conscience. In reality, though, it will have repercussions far beyond what Suzanne imagined, including tragic effects on the lives of people she has never met.
Meanwhile, Alan is seeking his own fresh start, pursuing a new relationship with a younger woman, a recovering addict who in turn is ready to believe the best about her new husband. But his past, and the ongoing reverberations of his earlier crimes, isn’t so easy to escape.
Told in an elliptical, nonlinear style, Stacey D’Erasmo’s THE COMPLICITIES introduces readers gradually to characters whose connection to the story only becomes apparent quite late in the game. It is a powerful interrogation of how individuals justify their actions, an exploration of the ways in which we claim the moral high ground, whether or not we can do so honestly.
As a character and as a narrator, Suzanne is both fascinating and often deeply unlikable, but her observations and realizations --- despite the lack of self-awareness at their core --- will resonate with readers both for their substance and for their irony: “Some things are just wrong. Some acts have consequences that compound. They rot and they stink, and they leak everywhere for years and years. They weigh so much that not even great teams of people and machines can carry them away.”
Filled with incisive observations of the human and natural worlds alike, THE COMPLICITIES is a beautifully novelistic exploration of profound ethical questions.
Teaser
After her husband Alan’s decades of financial fraud are exposed, Suzanne’s wealthy, comfortable life shatters. Alan goes to prison. Suzanne files for divorce, decamps to a barely middle-class Massachusetts beach town, and begins to create a new life and identity. Then Alan is released early, and the many people whose lives he ruined demand restitution. But when Suzanne finds herself awestruck at a major whale stranding, she makes an apparently high-minded decision that ripples with devastating effect not only through Alan’s life as he tries to rebuild but also through the lives of Suzanne and Alan’s son, Alan’s new wife, his estranged mother and, ultimately, Suzanne herself. When damage is done, who pays? Who loses? Who is responsible?
Promo
After her husband Alan’s decades of financial fraud are exposed, Suzanne’s wealthy, comfortable life shatters. Alan goes to prison. Suzanne files for divorce, decamps to a barely middle-class Massachusetts beach town, and begins to create a new life and identity. Then Alan is released early, and the many people whose lives he ruined demand restitution. But when Suzanne finds herself awestruck at a major whale stranding, she makes an apparently high-minded decision that ripples with devastating effect not only through Alan’s life as he tries to rebuild but also through the lives of Suzanne and Alan’s son, Alan’s new wife, his estranged mother and, ultimately, Suzanne herself. When damage is done, who pays? Who loses? Who is responsible?
About the Book
Award-winning author Stacey D’Erasmo tells a haunting and emotionally affecting story about a woman trying to rebuild her life after her husband’s arrest, and what she knew --- or pretended not to know --- about where their family’s money came from.
After her husband Alan’s decades of financial fraud are exposed, Suzanne’s wealthy, comfortable life shatters. Alan goes to prison. Suzanne files for divorce, decamps to a barely middle-class Massachusetts beach town, and begins to create a new life and identity. Ignoring a steady stream of calls from Norfolk State Prison, she tries to cleanse herself of all connections to her ex-husband. She tells herself that he, not she, committed the crimes.
Then Alan is released early, and the many people whose lives he ruined demand restitution. But when Suzanne finds herself awestruck at a major whale stranding, she makes an apparently high-minded decision that ripples with devastating effect not only through Alan’s life as he tries to rebuild but also through the lives of Suzanne and Alan’s son, Alan’s new wife, his estranged mother and, ultimately, Suzanne herself.
When damage is done, who pays? Who loses? Who is responsible?
With biting wisdom, THE COMPLICITIES examines the ways in which the stories we tell ourselves --- that we didn’t know, that we weren’t there, that it wasn’t our fault --- are also finally stories of our own deep complicity.
Audiobook available, read by Xe Sands
