The Complicities

ELECTRIFYINGA TREASURED WRITER WORKING AT THE HEIGHT OF HER POWERS. Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the EarsA haunting and emotionally fraught story of a woman dealing with the ripple effects of her husbands financial fraudand with what she knew, or pretended not to know, about it After her husband Alans massive white-collar crimes are exposed, Suzannes wealthy, com­fortable life shatters: Alan goes to prison, and Suzanne files for divorce. Ignoring a steady stream of calls from her ex at Norfolk State Prison, Suzanne thinks she can cleanse herself of all connections to her ex-husband and their old life together. Instead, she decamps to a Massachusetts beach town where she creates a new life and identity. Then Alan is released early, and the many peo­ple whose lives he has ruined demand restitution. At the same time, awestruck and obsessed by the spectacle of a major whale stranding on a beach near her home, Suzanne makes an apparently high-minded decision that in turn reverberates not only through Alans life as he tries to rebuild but also through the lives of their son, Alans new wife, his estranged mother, and, ultimately, Suzanne herself. A resonant and bitingly perceptive story about the people next to the bad guysthe queasy and ambiguous territory people like Suzanne inhabit as they stand by, and the ways in which they try to thread the needle of their culpabilityThe Complicities is a searing look at moral responsi­bility, and about who, in the end, pays for a crime. See more