Starting Over
The protagonist, Suzanne, is a middle-aged woman forced to start over again after her husband is convicted of white-collar crimes. She is uprooted from her comfortable upper-middle-class life to begin a job as a massage therapist despite the fact that she does not have an actual license or official training. On a lesser level narratively, but integral to the theme, is that two other women are also in stages of starting over because of their place within the orbit of Suzanne's husband: his new wife and his mother. The book explores the ways dependence upon or independence from men impacts the process of starting over for many women.
Complicity
The title of the book is a reference to just how much complicity Suzanne shares in the criminal behavior of her ex-husband. He was not a hardened criminal with a long record. He was eventually exposed as having engaged in white-collar financial crimes. Suzanne feels the suspicions fall upon her by those wondering how it is possible she could not at least have known what her husband was up to even if she herself was not an active participant in the crimes. Suzanne's narration is not entirely reliable on this subject as she seems to skirt the issue of her complicity in her husband's illegal activities. The larger thematic question is not so much whether she is complicit or not so much it is the question of what qualifies as complicity. The suggestion is that enjoying a lifestyle one knows is beyond one's means qualifies as complicity.
Redemption
Suzanne's overt narration strongly conveys a sense of denial of her complicity in the illegal behavior of her ex-husband. Her actions, however, seem very much to be those of a person seeking redemption. She moves to a small beach town that is definitely on a lower economic level than she is used to. She seeks to create a career for herself as a massage therapist to the point of practicing without a license. A major part of the narrative involves efforts by the beach community to save a whale that has beached itself which comes to obsess Suzanne. Ultimately, the means by which she starts her life is to put her energy into helping others. She expends her energy on trying to improve the existence of others. These actions are thematic attempts to redeem herself while seeking salvation for sins to which she never confesses.
