Stacey D'Erasmo's The Complicities is one of those books that sneaks up on you. At first glance, not a whole lot seems to happen, but it’s hard to put down because you just need to know what's going on. The writing is gorgeous, with D’Erasmo creating this quiet, almost hypnotic atmosphere that pulls you in.

The characters are where the real magic happens. They’re flawed, complicated, and not always easy to like, but that’s what makes them feel so real. You might not always agree with their choices, but you can see where they’re coming from, and that’s what makes them relatable in an unexpected way. It's like D'Erasmo really gets the messiness of people, and she doesn't shy away from showing it.

Even though the plot doesn’t have big twists or high drama, there’s this underlying tension that keeps you hooked. The complexities of the characters—how they deal with life’s moral gray areas—make you want to see where their stories will take them. It's more about what isn't said than what is, and that subtlety is really compelling.

Overall, The Complicities feels like a quiet, reflective read that stays with you long after you finish it. If you enjoy rich character development and beautiful prose, even when the action is understated, this book is well worth your time.

The Complicities is a book about three women who live in the shadow of what happens after 50 year old Alan has been convicted for financial fraud. The story is told in Suzanne's perspective, Alan's ex-wife. She claims she was ignorant of his crimes but enjoyed the lavish life his job provided. Suzanne divorces him when he's convicted and ceases all contact. She creates a new life in a blue-collar coastal town in Massachusetts.

After Alan is released early from prison, he lives with his son and lawyer. He eventually meets and marries a younger woman, Lydia. We learn about her complex past and mistakes and what led her to Alan. We also meet Alan’s long estranged mother. She was forced to give up custody of him when he was very young and has led a transient life since.

I found the relationships between these women and with Alan fascinating. He's highly intelligent but makes questionable choices to help his family again and again. I enjoyed pondering the ambiguity of choices we make and the ripple effects that come from them.

I have fairly mixed feelings about The Complicities. I found the prose and storytelling to be beautiful, but the plot itself felt lackluster. There were times I was confused too, specifically around the plotline of the beached whale (perhaps it was some sort of symbolism that I just didn't get.) I think it just moved too slowly for me. This is certainly a story that is very character-driven, and I did find the characters to be incredibly well-developed.

Honestly, I think this book was not really for me, but I did like the lyricism of it.

Thank you Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This one was a little outside my normal genre, but I still enjoyed it.

Suzanne was living quite a privileged life until it all came crashing down when her (now ex) husband Alan is arrested for running a ponzi scheme and defrauding people out of millions. The book is about Suzanne attempting to rebuild her life while reflecting on what happened.

There were times that I wasn't sure exactly how reliable Suzanne really was. She claimed to know nothing about her husband's business endeavors or where the money came from.

Was she a victim, or was she just complicit, and is complicity a crime?

There was a part about a whale that seemed to go on forever and I didn't really get it, but that is neither her nor there.

Absolutely beautiful prose but I couldn't fully get into it. It was very descriptive and character-driven, which makes it a slower-paced book. That's fine but it just didn't pull me in.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. This book was a bit slow and plodding, it was interesting enough to read, but there was no drama or build of excitement. I kept wondering where it was going, and the answer was that it just meandered for awhile.

This one just wasn't for me. It was interesting and well written but I wanted more to happen. There was just too much introspection.

Have you ever thought to yourself, “gee there really are not enough novels about or related to Ponzi Schemes”??? Have you ever thought you could (and would like to) fall in love with a whale on Cape Cod? Have you ever thought too much about how deeply connected every life is to all these other lives, seemingly without reason? Are you interested in 12-step programs and other kinds of transformative recovery???? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this book is for you.

The Complicities tells the story of Suzanne, Lydia, and Sylvia. It explores how three women who all had a connection to a ponzi scammer are all complicit in one another's suffering but in such an interesting and nuanced way! The prose was beautiful and engaging, I never thought I would feel so connected to Cape Cod, I was deeply invested in this story, love hurts.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Algonquin Books, for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for this honest review!!

Stacey d’Erasmo’s novel The Complicities looks at the fallout of financial fraud through the lives of a handful of characters. When the novel opens, Suzanne is beginning a new life following the imprisonment of her white collar criminal husband Alan for fraud. She moves to Chesham, a Massachusetts beach town, changes her name and tries to find a way to support herself. Suzanne’s new life isn’t easy, plus “her entire life vanished” when her husband was arrested and subsequently imprisoned. The money, the status, the mansion–all gone.


People have lots of opinions, and they say you destroyed their family’s future, but did anyone care about our family and what was happening to us? Why were we suddenly the bad guys?’

Suzanne, while professing not to ‘understand’ money matters, asks herself “how big was his [Alan’s] crime?” Suzanne doesn’t think about Alan’s victims yet she expects people to think about her position:

I’m not saying he didn’t commit a crime; he did things with people’s money that you aren’t really supposed to do, he’d been doing it a long time, and he got caught.

With a “little money” and two suitcases, she trades in her expensive, flashy car for an old Honda which “provided great cover.” She uses her maiden name, rents a dump, prints out a fake certificate from the internet and starts a massage business.

I mean, look: sure, you can call me complicit, but there’s complicit and complicit, isn’t there? It isn’t only one label than explains everything in every situation. There isn’t complicity but complicities, errors of different sizes, plus there are other factors, choices that in hindsight maybe weren’t right, but in the moment it seemed different. Other people have done a lot worse things. Pol Pot. Drug cartels. Sex traffickers.

Hmmm… Suzanne comparing herself favorably to Pol Pot. …

Part of the novel is Suzanne’s new life, her rejection of collect calls from Alan, and her son’s rejection of her. Her life is a slow hard climb just to pay the bills and keep the lights on. As time passes, Suzanne, as narrator, adds Lydia to the tale, the woman Alan meets when he is released from prison. Just as Suzanne skirts the details of her knowledge and involvement in Alan’s crimes, Alan has a constructed a narrative, for Lydia, for what went wrong:

That was when he crossed some lines, but basically, it was all a slow-motion cry for help. He’d had a lot of time in prison to think and read the great philosophers again (again?), and he could see that now. He had always spent so much time taking case of other people, trying to fulfill their expectations even to the point of going to prison himself for it. His need to please, to be the hero, had cost him everything.

Boo hoo. Alan knows how to pick ’em. Later in the novel, the story moves to include Alan’s mother and her role, or complicity, in her son’s approach to life. Ultimately, tangled associations stain and mold our lives and decisions. I enjoyed the novel for its complex approach to moral responsibility, and how love, trust and loyalty are elastically stretched until complicity takes over. I love to read books about how characters deal with money–not just how they spend it, but how the promise of money, the thought of money, lots of it, influences actions and makes people run off the rails.

review copy.

An interesting novel mainly centered on Suzanne, the wife of a man sent to prison after swindling his clients out of millions in a giant Bernie-Madoff-like ponzi scheme. Suzanne enjoyed all the trappings of extreme wealth while never questioning the source of their money, and insists she knew nothing. She divorces her husband and moves to a Massachusetts beach town trying to rebuild her life. The novel also highlights her husband's new wife Lydia after he is released early from prison and remarries, as well as his estranged birth mother. The novel raises some good themes for a book club debate and overall I enjoyed it, although the lengthy whale subplot was unnecessary.

We've all seen the downfall of schemers on the news. Have you ever wondered about their families? How much do they really know and what happens to them now. How deep are their complicities? In this story we meet Alan and try to unravel his web of deceit, mostly through the eyes of his wife Suzanne, who has divorced and distanced herself from both her husband and her son. I flip-flopped back and forth between feeling sad and sorry for every character in this story and then the next minute fuming, thinking "well, what did you expect to happen?!"

This isn't a big *wow* novel but it is definitely a great character study into the ripple effect of white-collar crime and the lies we tell ourselves and others.

Interesting style using the different voices. A little too heavy on the whale analogy that went on way too long. Better editing was needed. Perhaps better as a short story.

This book starts well and I'm sure the whale had an intended subliminal message - I just couldn't get it. The plot has a timeliness and much needed thread - it just seemed to unravel and never really come to an acceptable (at least to me) end. Okay - but just fell short of my expectations.

The Complicities is taken out of real life and put into a larger context about the people themselves.

Suzanne and Adam are a wealthy couple. Suzanne never considers where the money actually comes from and ignores signs that would have led to the truth. When Adam is arrested for running a ponzi scheme Suzanne gets some money. Believing she is doing the right thing she donates the money to charity.

This act denies those who were balked out of their money any financial recourse. Suzanne's action takes a heavy toll on these folks as well as her family. The blind eye that she had turned is explored as it the impact that a crime and a seemingly well-intentioned solution has. Privilege is central to this story.

The exploration of the far reaching implications of white collar crime is woven into the richness of each character that D'Erasmo writes.

D’Erasmo has always been a deft writer and that’s not changed. This is an odd but compelling tale of a fraudster and the women in his life, all of them complex and hard to categorize. No one is entirely reliable either. The whale sidebar story is, as metaphors go, on the lumpen side, but otherwise this is intriguing and pleasingly rather dark stuff,

I usually can find something that I like about a book that I can speak to, but it was very hard with this book. The only thing that I found myself caring about was the whale save and even then the author had it turn out badly and I'm still not sure why it was included as a huge part of the book. I found none of the characters compelling, nor did I really like any of them (although I was starting to like Ava, Alan's young daughter. Not only were the characters sad, but the story was dark (and sad) even when Suzanne is sitting on a beach in the sunshine. I would find this book really hard to recommend to anyone unless they really wanted to become terribly depressed.

A fantastic theme for our current times - how guilty are the supporting parties (in this case family members) when someone commits a crime with real victims

Suzanne flees New York when her husband Allen is jailed for a Bernie Madoff type scheme. She remains our narrator as she describes what happens when Allen is released and finds love anew, how his estranged mother is living and how Suzanne herself tries to live in the aftermath. Shunned by friends, neighbors and her own son, Suzanne is a sympathetic character. The question remains, however, how complicit was she? Filled with themes focusing upon capitalism, climate change, and family, this is a complex book with many characters. If you like modern and contemporary themes in your fiction and well written stories this book is for you! . #Algonquin #Algonquinbooks ##Netgalley #Netgalleyreads #TheComplicities #StaceyDErasmo

the relationship between 3 women and a a man who has been imprisoned for running a Ponzi scheme is a wonderfully developed picture of their interactions and the consequences.
All involved are "complicit" in the results.
None of them are nice people.
The best chapters in the book are about the beaching of a giant whale and attempts to save it

I thought this was a pretty good story. There was definitely some plot development problems. However I really liked the main character who is supposed to be problematic.

I read about half of this & just stopped. It started out okay, then just started not making sense and was very depressing.