#MeToo meets Human Aspiration – How Complicit Are We All?

You can always tell an excellent book from the visceral reaction it evokes in you when you read that last page. So, as I sat up in bed this Sunday morning while finishing the final chapters of Winnie M Li’s Complicit, the proverbial lump came to my throat. Know the feeling? That deep, inner satisfaction, at the same time tinged with a sense of loss? A feeling that lasts with you long after reading the final word? I knew I had read an excellent book. Hats off to Ms Li.

But before I move on, I want to point out one very important fact. This novel is most definitely not a thriller. Any potential readers who were expecting nail-biting chapter-ends and lots of action would be disappointed and therefore likely to write a negative review, so my humble advice to the marketing team would be to take out the word ‘thriller’ altogether.

Okay, so moving on. Winnie M Li’s moving novel is primarily about sexual and power exploitation, and the suppression of awareness. It’s about the third parties who have an inkling of what’s been taking place on that infamous casting couch or in that lurid hotel room, but decide against speaking out. Too much at risk. Shame. Fear. Whatever their personal, guilty reasoning. If you think about it, this theme can be transported into so many other aspects of our lives. Having the courage to speak out – or not, as the case may be.

Complicit is about so much more than #MeToo, although that of course is its driving theme. But that very word – driving ­– is what really underlies the entire story. How many of us, in our hopes and ambitions, in our careers and yearnings – especially if we’ve come from humble beginnings – are utterly driven to achieve the utmost? How many of us, along that long, bitter road, have still not achieved the success of our youthful desires? How many of us ‘could almost die from the wanting, all the striving with no reward,’ to put it in the protagonist Sarah Lai’s words?

I myself certainly number among those invisible lifelong dreamers; and perhaps this, more than anything, is why the pages of Complicit so deeply resonated with me. I don’t know a lot about the film-making industry (yet another fascinating aspect of the novel) and I haven’t had exposure to men as rich and powerful as Hugo North, who is clearly based on a real-life, unsavoury movie mogul of recent years. But I do know all about struggling to achieve that ever-elusive goal, again and again and again. Oh, how I empathised with Sarah!

And that brings me to another remarkable aspect of Winnie M Li’s writing. All the characters of Complicit simply jump off the pages. I realise that a lot of this book has been based upon the author’s own experiences, in particular in her portrayal of the protagonist and possibly other characters as well. But whether real, semi-real, or imagined, one of the most important tasks of any writer is to make the people in their conjured worlds live and breathe the same air that we do. And then live on.

Let me end with a quote from Sarah Lai. ‘To be seen, to be heard, to be remembered. That is all we really need in our lives.’

Winnie, you know us well!