I made a rookie error on a recent trip, choosing to bring only one book, a forthcoming novel by one of my favorite writers, certain it would carry me through my few days away from the giant pile of books in my home.
But I didn’t connect with that book. It happens. A hundred pages in, I was gritting my teeth to keep going. Fortunately, I was in a place with an outstanding independent bookstore (shoutout to Sherman’s in Bar Harbor, Maine), where I started pulling books off the shelf and reading the first paragraph, hoping for connection.By the end of the first paragraph of Claire Carusillo’s “The Responsible Party,” I was smitten. I’d laughed twice and been deeply impressed by a bravura turn of phrase at the paragraph’s conclusion.
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By the time I’d finished reading the book on the flight home, I knew I’d experienced a surefire winner of one of this year’s Biblioracle Book Awards.
“The Responsible Party” is a story within a story, or maybe a story within a story within a story. Our narrator, “Claire Carusillo,” has landed ignominiously in her parents’ suburban Chicago townhome. The 31-year-old failed skincare influencer is being sued by a former follower who overdosed on a colloidal silver regimen, which has turned her blue.
Claire both admires and resents her mother, Kath, a serial entrepreneur who has invented some kind of spray that preserves the crispiness of lettuce, but that may also be carcinogenic. Claire has long been fascinated by a bit of family lore about her great-great-grandmother Fanny and great-aunt Sarah, both of whom suffered independent shipwreck incidents, but managed to survive, turning their tales into a kind of low-rent vaudeville act.
In the novel, Claire sets out to tell this story, but it is interrupted by the arrival of a police officer and a forensic genealogy investigator who have found a body that contains a hair bearing the family’s DNA. The body seems to date to Kath’s teen years when she was living with Fanny and Sarah.
Claire’s mother has been a mystery to her, an almost alien presence, and Claire sees her own failure to thrive as rooted in this mystery. Kath has insisted that the women of the family are indomitable — Fanny and Sarah survived shipwrecks! — but Claire has never been able to achieve this mindset. Claire takes the opportunity of the police’s request for DNA from the family to blackmail her Kath into telling the story of her teen years, her time with Fanny and Sarah, these legendary figures, and what happened to the dead man with the hair in his mouth.
The main story shifts to Kath’s junior year of high school (early 1970s), abandoned by her mother to Fanny and Sarah, who are both old and infirm, Kath works at McDonald’s, where she steals buns and mayonnaise to feed her great-grandmother and aunt. One night, Irv, the dissolute and semi-dashing son of a prominent local family, barges into the restaurant as Kath is closing, and her life changes.
The novel then resolves two mysteries: the mystery about the dead man, but more important to Claire, the mystery of her mother, who conveys the story that Claire then conveys to the reader.
The structure is complicated but necessary because ultimately this is Claire’s story, a quest to understand herself.
This novel is brilliant, frequently laugh-out-loud funny and truly singular. Claire doesn’t know which parts of her mother’s story are true. It’s not clear to the reader what Claire might be fudging herself.
All of it is a great ride.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Tyll” by Daniel Kehlmann
2. “History of the Rain” by Niall Williams
3. “Kingdom of Shadows” by Alan Furst
4. “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea” by Emily Wilson
5. “Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924” by Robert Service
— John K., Ottawa, Canada
I’m wondering if John has read Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours.” If not, I think it’s a great fit.
1. “Lady Tan’s Circle of Friends” by Lisa See
2. “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara
3. “Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago” by Will Quam
4. “Revenge Prey” by John Sandford
5. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
— Jeff F., Deerfield
I gotta check out that “Fire and Clay” book for myself, but I’m supposed to be the recommender here, and I’m suggesting “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving.
1. “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi
2. “Whistler” by Ann Patchett
3. “Raising Hare” by Chloe Dalton
4. “Strange Houses” by Uketsu
5. “Carl’s Doomsday Scenario” by Matt Dinniman
— Libby T., Glenview
I think Libby will get a kick out of Natalie Zina Walschots’ “Hench.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to [email protected]
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.John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.