Selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013, a Canada Reads Top 40 Pick, and a NOW Magazine Book of the Year
While in Copenhagen, Sara Wheeler, a Toronto journalist, happens upon Cirkus Mirak, a touring Ethiopian children’s circus. She later meets and is convinced to drive the circus founder, Raymond Renaud, through the night from Toronto to Montreal. Such chance beginnings lead to later fateful encounters.
With Accusation, Catherine Bush again proves herself one of Canada’s finest authors as she examines the impossibility inherent in attempting to uncover “the truth.” After a friend of Sara’s begins work on a documentary about the circus, unsettling charges begin to float to the surface, disturbing tales of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Raymond. Accounts and anecdotes mount, denunciations fly, and while Sara tries to untangle the narrative knots and determine what to believe, the concept of a singular (truth) becomes slippery. Her present search is simultaneously haunted by her past. Moving between Canada, Ethiopia, and Australia, Accusation follows a network of lives that intersect with life-altering consequence, painfully revealing that the best of intentions can still lead to disaster, yet from disaster spring seeds of renewal and hope.
“A persistent tapping at the complexities of prejudice – the accusations we harbour in our hearts – brings an unnerving friction to Accusation… Bush’s prose is deeply considered, calm on the surface yet, on closer reading, full of ambiguities… Accusation is both a psychological thriller and a novel of anxiety: How can we interpret the actions of another if we are unable to perceive the most crucial elements? In the end, the inner life of another person might be the greatest mystery of all.” — Madeleine Thien, The Globe and Mail
“…Be assured that Accusation is that rare beast: a literary novel with the page-turning properties of the best genre fiction. View it from a slightly oblique angle, in fact, and it could almost be a crime novel of the Scandinavian variety, Henning Mankell or Karen Fossum striding headlong into the murkier reaches of human motivation.” — Montreal Gazette
“Concentric circles spread steadily from the ethical dilemma at the novel’s core, growing in depth and implication right up until a perfectly pitched and exquisitely surprising ending. Critical acclaim has never been in short supply for Bush, but there’s a sense that Accusation, with a bit of good fortune, could also be her commercial breakthrough.” — Calgary Herald
“A compelling novel that is an exploration of the complex ethical arena of accusations…. Accusation — rich with questions and complexity — is also an homage to the transformative powers of the circus, the beauty and possibility of beginning again.” — Vancouver Sun
“Catherine Bush’s Accusation is a novel of great global and emotional scope.” — David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World and Natasha and Other Stories
“At the heart of Accusation — and the source of its suspense — is the desire to see justice done in a situation where truth is elusive. The power of this novel is that it brings a quiet dignity and compassion to precisely this state of moral helplessness. This is a moving and ambitious book.” — Anne Michaels, author of The Winter Vault and Fugitive Pieces