A tricky and absorbing tale about crime, punishment and the lies we tell ourselves ... Into [Suzanne's] new, lonely life a bomb is dropped, in the form of a beached whale. Seemingly out of nowhere it appears, immense and struggling to survive on the shore. In less capable hands, this beast might feel like a whale of a metaphor, but D’Erasmo commits to its extraordinariness and the specificity of its mammalian distress ... The problem of the whale takes up a lot of real estate in The Complicities. But the novel makes a different, rather remarkable turn in the second section, which homes in on a cast of supporting characters and gives them voice — sort of ... Suzanne seems to loosen her storytelling grip, opening it up to Lydia’s and Sylvia’s perspectives, this wobbly orbit of women around Alan ... Suzanne may appear to be generously allowing some light into the cracks, but really what she’s doing (what we understand her to be doing) is carefully arranging herself to show off her best angle.
... 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 ... Filled with incisive observations of the human and natural worlds alike, The Complicities is a beautifully novelistic exploration of profound ethical questions.
... 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 ... What makes the story come alive, to D’Erasmo’s enduring credit, is its persistent grounding in the physical ... Gracefully, suspensefully, D’Erasmo layers in backstories of key individuals in Alan’s life, allowing readers to piece together a composite portrait of that charismatic, smooth, elusive man...Each of their narratives almost stands as a small novel of its own: ultra-strange, ultra-human ... A great deal of marine science is itemized, including reportage on local and national policy-feuding. Despite this plot element’s passionate intentions and clear role to emblematize a different, towering complicity — that of our own in destroying the Earth — I struggled with the sense of its feeling imposed and, with its bountiful explaining, close to becoming an infomercial. D’Erasmo finally makes it work, tying Suzanne’s passion for the crucial symbolism of the whale’s death into her rather stunning later choice ... Of the novel’s assorted focuses — families, couples, love, sex, guilt, economics. ecological peril — the kaleidoscopic portrait of Alan most tantalizes. Here, D’Erasmo’s insights shine ... D’Erasmo’s writing is tight and flavorful, her thinking sharp, her characters warmly idiosyncratic, her causes timely, complex and morally freighted. Maybe that is more than enough.
... 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 passages about the whale and Suzanne's fascination with it highlight in moving ways both the interconnectedness of the world and the way that Suzanne and others can become so focused on the forest that they miss the trees in the form of the individual people around them ... In this carefully constructed meditation, readers will enjoy witnessing how characters slowly fit together the pieces of themselves that they had hidden.
As in all her finely wrought, shrewdly piercing novels, D’Erasmo keeps us recalibrating our perceptions. The details about the whale are dramatic and deeply affecting. Every human exchange is fraught, and our feelings about Suzanne rise and fall like the tides. An arresting and intricately spun inquiry into talent, resentment, and risk, love and betrayal, self and community, guilt and retribution.
Full of lingering questions ... D’Erasmo is admirably skillful in moving the story backward and forward through time ... Intriguing and sharply drawn characters ... D’Erasmo’s descriptions are vivid. Her similes and metaphors are often explosive.
Perfect ... Nuanced ... With smooth shifts in perspective and understated and precise prose, D’Erasmo demonstrates a mastery of the craft. The result is propulsive and profound.
D’Erasmo sets herself up for a challenge, perhaps, in trying to make wealthy white-collar criminals sympathetic, but in many ways this circumstance is beside the point ... Slow burning but thoughtful and deftly structured.
