CULPABILITY, by Bruce Holsinger
Bruce Holsinger’s fifth novel, “Culpability,” is a who’s who of hot-button issues, including A.I., corporate greed, tech addiction and even a subtle subplot about the encroachment of youth sports on family life.
But the topic most likely to spark appreciative group texts among book club members of a certain age has to do with a less trendy subject: teenagers. Specifically, the relationship between a father and his 17-year-old son, which Holsinger depicts in all its maddening complexity. How far will a parent go to protect a child on the brink of adulthood? What if the child sets in motion a chain of events so devastating, there is no easy fix?
“Culpability” begins in a minivan, where many a family crisis is born. The Cassidy-Shaws of Bethesda, Md., are en route to a lacrosse tournament in Delaware, the final one of their eldest child’s illustrious high school career. That player, Charlie, is behind the wheel, with the rest of the crew seated in order of importance: Noah, the lawyer/narrator paterfamilias, rides shotgun; his wife, Lorelei, a world-renowned expert on artificial intelligence, is seated behind him; tween daughters, Alice and Izzy, are in the van’s second and third rows. Suddenly, despite the vehicle’s hands-free navigation system — or perhaps because of it — Charlie veers into an oncoming car, killing two people.
In the aftermath, Noah tells us, “With a throb of sorrow I take Charlie’s hand and he lets me hold it, for the first time in years.” This gesture cements a new father-son dynamic — less cheerleader and Division 1-bound lax bro, more protective and vulnerable on both sides of the equation.
Here’s where Holsinger gets ever so slightly over his skis, to borrow a phrase from another prestige sport. He could have written a novel about a family blundering through the aftermath of a terrible tragedy caused by a teenager. Instead, Holsinger — who tackled toxic achievement culture in “The Gifted School” and climate change in “The Displacements” — ratchets the stakes even higher, pushing us to the brink of incredulity. It’s as though he was hellbent on delivering a Book That Will Make You Think when an old-fashioned domestic drama would have sufficed. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but in this case we lose some emotional depth to philosophical questions (albeit important ones).
In the aftermath of the accident, Lorelei engineers a family vacation/recuperation at a Chesapeake Bay rental house that happens to share a cove with a tech mogul of the Musk/Bezos variety. It becomes clear that Lorelei has been in cahoots with him (in a professional sense) and that Charlie will soon be in cahoots with his daughter (in a personal one). The fact that the tech mogul’s daughter is named Eurydice, “Dissee” for short, turns out not to be the foreshadowing a mythology buff might expect, though there is another major mishap to be survived, this one involving a sailboat. Humming alongside a series of head-spinning events and coincidences are questions about who was responsible for the book’s inaugural accident and whether A.I. is a force for good or evil.
To Holsinger’s credit, both answers are nuanced. He peppers his novel with snippets of magazine articles, research papers and text messages, including ones between Alice, the middle child, and Blair, her A.I. chatbot friend. Elements like these can be a distraction in a novel; here, they provide texture, moving the narrative forward and gently educating readers about the potential and pitfalls of newfangled technology. (I type this while checking details against a digital copy of the book, equipped with an A.I. assistant that offered to summarize the plot and provide key quotes. Wait, isn’t that my job?)
Regardless of how far afield it wanders, “Culpability” always returns to Noah and Charlie. Noah learns to loosen his grip; Charlie begins to map a future for himself apart from the one they envisioned together. We meet them at a tender time — a “hinge of life,” as Noah calls it — and Holsinger does it justice.
“No matter what parents do, their children’s outcomes are neither predictable or inevitable,” he reminds us. “Life is not an algorithm and never will be.”
CULPABILITY | By Bruce Holsinger | Spiegel & Grau | 380 pp. | $30
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years.
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