THE COMPLICITIES

A Massachusetts woman tries to rebuild her life after her husband goes to prison for a white-collar crime.

Suzanne and Alan had a good life in Boston. They had a big house, with a housekeeper and a gardener, a darling if somewhat aimless son, the freedom to travel. All of this was courtesy of Alan’s successful brokerage business and Suzanne’s ability to keep the household running smoothly. But then everything blew up: Alan had been defrauding people and is sent to prison for his crimes, and Suzanne leaves, insisting to anyone who will listen, including the reader, that she didn’t understand enough about money to know what Alan was doing, not really. The novel begins with Suzanne arriving in the seaside town of Chesham, trying to start her life over as a massage therapist (or “bodywork” practitioner), to reconnect with her college-age son, who has sided with Alan, and to come to terms with her own complicity in the collapse of her life. 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. Though Suzanne gets the most airtime, her central narrative is spliced together with the perspectives of two other women: Lydia, Alan’s new wife, whom he met after being released from prison and who has demons of her own; and Sylvia, Alan’s estranged mother. It’s only in piecing together all three of these narratives that we get a fuller picture of Alan, and that’s the point, through D’Erasmo’s clever telling—people can never be seen whole, and parts you think you see never tell the full tale. “A real genealogy chart would trace damage back and back,” Suzanne muses. “It would look like a kaleidoscope.”

Slow burning but thoughtful and deftly structured.