Complicity - Hardcover

Cooke, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316155071 ISBN 13: 9780316155076

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1988

Amanda and her daughter Massie return to the family's neglected and remote summer retreat after the death of Amanda's retreat after the death of Amanda's mother and struggle to face the painful truths about their relationships with family members and each other

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From Publishers Weekly:

From the alternating viewpoints of mother and daughter Amanda and Maggie, this quietly eloquent first novel records a family's terse transactions as they complicitously hide behind lies. They share violent memories: the shooting deaths of Amanda's father and son Evan; Amanda's cold denial of her husband; her rejection of the women Evan loved. The family plays out its tight drama in a wooded, mountainous New England setting, where they own a rough lakeside cabin built by a great-grandfather. The heady beauty of the place seems overhung with menace; Amanda remarks, "You must always be prepared for death on this lake." Time shuttles seamlessly back and forth from Amanda's repressed girlhood to a here-and-now in which affectionate Maggie struggles to break through her mother's brittleness and fear for her "weak" heart. The narrative surface, often made up of echoing repetitions and bleakly vacant comments, contrasts with a tumultuous inner world, where feelings can only be experienced through the sufferings of natural creaturesnotably swallows, owls and loons. These moments account for Cooke's strongest writing, although the novel's contrived wrap-up may disappoint.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Love lacking and love misguided are the subjects of this first novel. Maggie can't seem to make a commitment to her lover, Jeremy, or reach her cold and critical mother. The emotional convolutions of Maggie and Amanda, her mother, are laid out for us when the two return to their neglected summer retreat in Maineneglected because it was there that Amanda's father drowned himself, and Maggie's brother was shot. Amanda's own past has scarred her so that the sins of the father are truly visited on the child in this family, and Maggie must try to break the curse. Though Cooke deals with complex themes, her stiff characterizations and melodramatic plot undercut her effort. Laurie Spector Sullivan, Transit Authority Archives, Boston
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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