“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
