Culpability
By Bruce Holsinger
Published 2025
Read Dec 2025
The driver for this novel is an accident that occurs when a self-driving car hits and kills a couple but leaves the occupants of the self-driving car completely or relatively unharmed. The person “driving” is Charlie, a seventeen-year-old lacrosse star, who is on his way to a championship game that is the last of his high school career. He is heading off to the University of North Carolina which has recruited him for their team. Sitting in the front passenger seat is his father, Daniel, a first-generation college graduate who is a lawyer. He is writing a memo for his job while Charlie is driving. Sitting in the second-row seats are Charlie’s mother, Lorelei, and his sister, Alice. Lorelei is a highly published researcher and consultant in the area of AI. She is busy working as well when the accident occurs. Alice is the middle child and is the occupant who yells when she sees a car coming into their lane. This is the act that causes Charlie to take the wheel which precedes the accident. Izzy is the youngest child and is lounging in the third seat while texting with her beloved brother, Charlie as he “drives”. Izzy suffers a broken leg. Alice suffers a concussion and is hospitalized overnight. Everyone else survives with only a few bruises.
To get away from the trauma of the accident and relax a bit before Charlie heads to UNC, the family rents a house on an inlet of the Chesapeake Bay they had rented the year before. They aren’t left alone, however, as accident investigators want to talk to Daniel and Charlie. Daniel obtains a lawyer who tells him he can represent only Charlie or Daniel but not both.
The question is: who or what is culpable? Charlie who apparently overrides the AI and had been texting? Daniel for not noticing that Charlie was texting? The AI for not avoiding the accident? Something or someone else? It seems there are many secrets that the family members hold that may be relevant.
In the meantime, more troubles arise. Father Daniel is upset that the beautiful farm across the small inlet from their rented house has been replaced with a huge home and a security staff protecting the property of a wealthy businessman, Monet. Why the over-gentrification of their peaceful vacation area? Father Daniel is further upset when son Charlie becomes involved with Monet’s daughter, Eurydice, and the family is invited to a party at the Monet compound. You’ll need to read the novel to find out the rest of the complications.
Modern themes abound in addition to the major theme of culpability of fatal accidents involving self-driving vehicles: impact of travel sports on families; impact of wealth on decision making; relationships of dual career spouses, especially if there is a perceived “imbalance” of capabilities; fragility of life as we know it.
It’s interesting to this reader that for most of the books she’s read recently she doesn’t particularly find any of the characters very sympathetic. It’s true for this book as well. We spend most of our time learning what father Daniel thinks and does. He is far from sympathetic in this reader’s opinion. He’s not communicating with his wife well. He’s failing to connect with his son who is not behaving as he would prefer. He drinks heavily often, sometimes driving under the influence.
Although the book is a very quick read and at times feels a little superficial, there really is substance for rich conversation with others about it.
MarshaReads.com 