The Responsible Party
A Novel
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A rollicking, "unsinkable," (Sam Lipsyte) and hilarious debut novel about a family of unforgettable women obsessed with securing their legacy, for fans of Geek Love
Claire grew up with the legend of the Unsinkable Mounsey Women. Her great-great-grandmother Fanny made headlines in 1915 for washing ashore in England nearly a year after her ship sank. Fanny’s daughter Sarah went to collect her mother on the equally ill-fated Lusitania—whose sinking she, too, survived. Their improbable endurance led to regional stardom on the Midwestern vaudeville circuit. But Claire never knew the full story—until now.
Listless, jobless, and recently canceled for extolling skin-care advice online that sent a reader to the hospital, Claire is surprised when a knock at the door turns out to be the police, looking for answers about a murder from the 1970s they suspect her mother, Kath, may know something about. As the cops zero in, Claire demands answers from her mother.
Kath’s comically long response, which blossoms into the story of the Mounseys and their descendants writ large, moves from a Liverpudlian poorhouse at the onset of World War I to a Lake Michigan lighthouse in 1971 (when sex was freer and McDonald’s fried their potatoes with beef tallow) to present-day Chicagoland; along the way, it offers Claire a richer understanding of what she inherited from the complicated, resilient women she descends from.
Replete with inappropriately old boyfriends, dubious medical professionals, and more than a few boats, The Responsible Party is the story of several women, in several different timelines, trying to stay afloat.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carusillo debuts with a serpentine and sharp-witted saga inspired by her family history. Narrated by a 31-year-old failed skin care influencer who's also named Claire Carusillo, the story begins in 1914 with Claire's great-great-grandmother Fanny Mounsey going down with the RMS Empress of Ireland off the coast of Quebec, presumed dead along with nearly 1,000 other passengers bound for England. Eleven months later, a toothless, moaning woman with Fanny's name sewn into her underclothes surfaces in Liverpool. Her daughter, Sarah, sails for England on the Lusitania and survives its sinking. She brings Fanny home to their Chicago suburb, and the two eventually develop a "hyper-regional" vaudeville act called "The Unsinkable Mounseys." In the present, Claire and her mother, Kath, are visited by a police officer and a "genetic genealogist" who have questions about a male body, many decades dead, that has been found in the nearby woods, a strand of hair around its tongue. DNA suggests the hair's owner is matrilineally related to Claire. Growing up, Claire thought she learned everything there was to know about the Mounseys ("Kath would juxtapose whatever my lesser tragedy of the week was against the Mounsey calamities to embarrass me into developing her hardiness gene"). But now, talking to Claire, Kath ping-pongs through time to shed light on Fanny's fate and the family's connection to the dead body. Carusillo juggles the many plot threads with aplomb and proves to be a consummate prose stylist. This one has energy and ambition to spare.
