Criminals [Hardcover]

Margot Livesey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 1997

With dark poetry and domestic acuity, the author of Homework shows how families pull together, form themselves anew, and occasionally fly apart at the seams. Ranging from Scotland to America to Italy--and to a novel-within-a-novel--Criminals brilliantly captures the stories of complicated, sympathetic people who try to do right but turn somehow wrong. LG Alternate.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Criminals is a tweaked gothic. Instead of a dark castle, there is an average Scottish farmhouse, Mill of Fortune. There is nothing supernatural, and the love story is all in one character's mind, nearly losing him his livelihood. Ewan is less a knight-at-arms than a London businessman, and his sister is the madwoman. Mollie, however, is not in the attic, but very much up and about after her novelist-lover has left her. Ewan knows he must check on her and heads for Scotland. During a bus layover, he hears a small whimper and is amazed to find a baby in a bathroom stall. Hearing his bus about to leave, he grabs the bundle and ends up taking it with him.

Unfortunately, Mollie's reaction is not one he had hoped for: instead of calling the police, she lays siege, and their criminal career begins. Margot Livesey is clearly interested in exploring one question: How much do you really know about your family? For six chapters, the narration goes back and forth between brother and sister, but the seventh is a surprise--devoted to the man who left the baby on the filthy floor. Kenneth's thought processes are sinister and idiotic, giving him a great deal of comic energy. Having followed Ewan to Mill of Fortune, he is determined to bilk him out of as much money as possible. "Ideas, he thought, I am an ideas man." As Kenneth does his brutal best and Ewan is caught up in insider-trading complications, Mollie--still hanging onto the child--grows increasingly paranoid: "She heard something. Had Ewan spoken? Had the table? She examined each in turn. The sleek wood had grown oddly smug and duplicitous ..." Livesey is an expert practitioner of the fiction of threat, the novel of isolation and misery in which the family is a nest of sorrows. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"Banker finds Baby in Bus station" is the caption that uptight London bachelor Ewan Munro ruefully realizes will describe events in this intriguing novel about the banality of evil. Discovering a swaddled infant in a lavatory stall in Perth, Ewan almost absentmindedly takes the baby to his unstable sister, Mollie Lafferty, intending to call the authorities once he arrives at her home. Mollie is in a bad way; she has split with her novelist husband, anguished because he has fictionalized her in his current novel, and, she thinks, given away secrets she didn't even realize she harbored. (Chunks of this novel are interpolated as Ewan reads it, adding tension to a narrative already taut with frightening implications.) For Mollie now recognizes that her great need is to have a child, and she conspires to keep the baby. Meanwhile, the child's feckless father, an amoral layabout called Kenneth, who has impetuously abandoned his daughter, realizes that he can extort money when he shows up to claim her; and her mother, a nurse from Bombay, becomes distraught at the infant's disappearance. Scottish-born Livesey (Homework) controls the narrative with assurance, gradually laying bare the bedrock of her characters' inner lives. One reads with fascinated attention as Ewan and Mollie?he preoccupied by a lapse in his meticulously moral behavior that has made him complicit in illegal trading; she sliding into emotional breakdown?discover how easy it is to become criminals. Livesey maintains a low-key style that perfectly matches the way ordinary lives can slip into chaos; her elegantly simple prose, her control of pacing and characterization and her insights into human behavior combine to produce a fascinating narrative. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (August 19, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517193604
• ISBN-13: 978-0517193600
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,188,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thin line between good and evil, September 22, 2000

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Criminals (Mass Market Paperback)

This incredible book awed me. I still haven't been able to get it out
of my mind. Having read The Missing World, I wanted to get my hands on
another Margot Livesey book. Her beautiful language is filled with
dark humor and disturbing scenes. Criminals is about selfishness and
what it takes to do the right thing. On his way to visit his
emotionally imbalanced sister, Ewan finds a baby in a bathroom at a
bus station. Frantic, he takes the baby with him. He figures that once
he's settled at his sister's house he'd be able to report the missing
baby. Little does he know that it is all part of a man's scheme to
make a profit. To make matters worse, his sister becomes emotionally
and psychologically attached to the infant. There are many disturbing
and engrossing moments in the novel, especially its disarming and
surprising conclusion. This is one of the most memorable psychological
thrillers I have ever read. There's a thin line between good and evil
and moral and criminal behavior in the story. Are you searching for a
suspenseful and literary thriller? Look no further. Criminals is a
book that will keep you turning the pages in the wee hours of the
night.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN ENTERTAINING, FINELY-WOVEN TALE, December 5, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Criminals (Hardcover)

CRIMINALS is my second experience with the fine writing of Margot Livesey -- her newest, EVA MOVES THE FURNITURE, drew me in. The threads of this story are delightfully convoluted -- the fact that one of the characters is a weaver may be an unintentional metaphor, but I suspect Ms. Livesey knew exactly what she was doing in assigning her that activity.

There are many issues addressed by both the story and the people who populate it so vividly. Honesty, in many guises and forms, is chief among them -- honesty in work, in relationships with family and lovers, with ourselves, and, ultimately, with the law. Some of the characters learn from the events that transpire here -- some do not.

There are three main branches of plot in this novel -- and one of them is a book within the book...

Ewan Munro, a respected banker, on his way to visit his sister Mollie in Scotland -- who is obviously distraught over her recent separation from her lover of several years -- finds a baby in a roadside mens' room, apparently abandoned. Through a series of good intentions and botched attempts to communicate his find, he winds up bringing it with him to his sister's home. In her pain and anguish, she latches onto the baby with all of her emotions, as a virtual lifeline to the world -- and it's a tether she is terrified to break.

We also see the story develop from the perspective of Kenneth, a young n'er-do-well, looking out for no one but himself, caring not a whit for the feelings or well-being of his girlfriend -- or her child. When any emotions arise within him to cast doubt on the worth of his devious schemes, he douses them with alcohol and rationalization.

Against this action is cast the novel-within-the-novel -- written by Mollie's departed lover. Within its pages, Ewan begins to see his sister's intimate secrets revealed -- and through it he discovers the reasons behind much of her mental trauma.

As the story moves along, Livesey skillfully brings these threads together, allowing the reader to follow them comfortably through her shifts of perspective. There is well-managed suspense here, combined with some very human, credible characters -- she builds and reveals their personalities and traits gently but thoroughly. It makes for an engrossing, rewarding read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful and intelligent . . . Recommended read, May 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Criminals (Mass Market Paperback)

When a yuppie banker finds an abandoned baby girl on the floor of a bus station restroom, he ignites the passions, greed, and madness that were lying just beneath of the surface of seemingly ordinary lives. As we watch helplessly, the situation slowly spirals out of control, and the characters' carelessness, secrets, and lies lead inevitably to tragedy. Livesey shows us that we are all criminals waiting for the right set of circumstances to reveal our crimes. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and would recommend it. Not exactly a mystery, or even a thriller, it is a well-written, intelligent, and suspenseful novel which I COULD put down but looked forward to picking up again.