- 2022
- Algonquin
Formats
- Hardcover / Paperback / Digital / Audio
Additional Content
Book clubs
Stacey is available to chat with your group online.
Book clubs interested in hosting Stacey are encouraged to contact her directly by email.
The Complicities
- 'Best Fall Fiction Titles of 2022' — Oprah Daily
- 'Must-Read Books of Fall 2022' — Town & Country
- Long-listed for the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Now available in paperback
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.
"A subtle masterpiece." — Ruth Ozeki
"Full of small mysteries that deserve lengthy discussions with well-read friends." — BookPage (Starred Review)
"A tricky and absorbing tale about crime, punishment and the lies we tell ourselves...remarkable." — The New York Times
"Forceful... Urgent and personal. 'Complicities' solidifies D'Erasmo's reputation not just as a skilled shaper of disparate fictional worlds and beings, but as a fierce investigator of how it may feel to live inside them." — The Washington Post
"An arresting and intricately spun inquiry into talent, resentment, and risk, love and betrayal; self and community, guilt and retribution." — Booklist (Starred Review)
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.
Audio Sample
Listen to a sample from the audio edition of The Complicities, as read by Xe Sands.
Backstory
A look into Stacey's research for The Complicities, and the profound experience of witnessing a stranded whale.
Stacey was interviewed for the podcast "First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing," where she discussed the themes, ideas, and inspirations behind The Complicities with host Mitzi Rapkin.
- Interview: "On our tendency to elide the truth"
- The Yale Review
- On The Complicities
- The Boston Globe
Reviews & Praise
"[F]orceful... Urgent and personal, 'Complicities' solidifies D'Erasmo's reputation not just as a skilled shaper of disparate fictional worlds and beings, but as a fierce investigator of how it may feel to live inside them. What makes the story come alive, to D'Erasmo's enduring credit, is its persistent grounding in the physical. Certainly, D'Erasmo's writing is tight and flavorful; her thinking sharp; her characters warmly idiosyncratic; her causes timely, complex, and morally freighted." The Washington Post
"[A] thought-provoking examination of the stories people tell themselves and the ways that their actions intertwine, whether deliberately or inadvertently, with the lives of others. Richly crafted... In this carefully constructed meditation, readers will enjoy witnessing how characters slowly fit together the pieces of themselves that they had hidden." Shelf Awareness
"D'Erasmo is admirably skillful in moving the story backward and forward through time [with] intriguing and sharply drawn characters. D'Erasmo's descriptions are vivid. Her similes and metaphors are often explosive. Full of small mysteries that deserve lengthy discussions with well-read friends, The Complicities is a superb book club selection." BookPage (Starred Review)
"Guilt by association is a thorny concept, especially now, in our ravaged world. How much are we to blame for the many misdeeds, intimate and global, that we may not perpetrate, but from which we benefit? And if we admit culpability, to what extent are we responsible for redress? Do we stop using plastic straws? Give up international travel? Live off the grid? ... Stacey D'Erasmo's novel 'The Complicities' is a tricky and absorbing tale about crime, punishment and the lies we tell ourselves...[R]emarkable." The New York Times
"Three women consider their relationships with a white-collar criminal in this perfect outing from D'Erasmo...With smooth shifts in perspective and understated and precise prose, D'Erasmo demonstrates a mastery of the craft. The result is propulsive and profound." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"A suspenseful, compelling novel that raises the questions: How do we reckon with corruption and our own complicity?" The Millions
"Slow burning but thoughtful and deftly structured." Kirkus Reviews
"The prose abounds with lyrical imagery. But its particular strength is its examination of that liminal space between innocence and culpability, leaving readers to judge whether these characters are as innocent as they want to believe." Library Journal
"As in all her finely wrought, shrewdly piercing novels, D'Erasmo keeps us recalibrating our perceptions… An arresting and intricately spun inquiry into talent, resentment, and risk, love and betrayal; self and community, guilt and retribution." Booklist (Starred Review)
"The Complicities is a subtle masterpiece. Imagine a voice—lyrical and low, intimate and insistent—whispering in your ear. Half-told truths simmer below the surface, like the uneasy murmuring of a conscience. Mesmerized, you listen. There is menace here in D'Erasmo's disquieted world, and terrible beauty, too. Things are not what they appear to be. We are not who we think we are, either, and yet we are complicit." Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
"In Stacey D'Erasmo's wonderful new novel, The Complicities, the past catches up to the present and overtakes it. All the scattered misdeeds and cut corners and malfeasances come together as crimes, big and small, and the characters either see the criminality or try to ignore it. But this suspenseful novel sees it all, and I found myself enlightened and deeply moved by its compelling story." Charles Baxter, author of The Sun Collective
"The music stops and a crime is uncovered. How much did Suzanne really know about her ex-husband's financial misdeeds? And what does it mean—in such a corrupted world—to reckon with and atone for our own complicities? Stacey D'Erasmo's latest unspools with the twisty intensity of a psychological thriller and the oceanic depth of a literary tour de force. The Complicities is an electrifying novel of powerful moral complexity, from a treasured writer working at the height of her powers." Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
"The Complicities had me enthralled. This gripping, human tale of our crimes—financial, environmental, self-delusional—is impossible to put down. D'Erasmo weaves a thriller of a tale, exposing sticky webs of corruption that entangle our lives and fates, even those who fantasize about their innocence, redemption, and escape." Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book: An Investigation