How does the author use allusion in the novel, Winter?

Several literary allusions play a role in Winter, but Shakespeare’s Cymbeline is woven throughout the novel to symbolize the eternal, inextricable nature of family drama. When Lux first references the lesser known play, Art thinks she is making the intricate plot up. However, it is a real play, which in the narrative details bears little resemblance to Winter, but does share the same themes of “poison, mess, bitterness, then the balance coming back. The lies revealed. The losses compensated” (315). Lux mentions the play in the first place because the people dinner table reminds her of the characters in the play, “Where everybody is pretending to be someone or something else…And you can’t see for the life of you how any of it will resolve in the end” (200). Although the Cleves family are only playing out their own new version of the old family story, they cannot see the ways in which they are playing to their roles, and it is up to the audience member Lux to point out their sometimes farcical and sometimes tragic mistakes.