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Welcome back to Insider Pix, where we uncover what entertainment and culture insiders are watching, reading, and listening to! Next up:
Claire Carusillo
Claire Carusillo is the co-owner of Storyboard, a bookstore/skate shop/coffee bar in Midway, UT. Her first novel The Responsible Party is out now, and has debuted to high praise. The New York Times calls it “A terrifically comic debut novel . . . [that] succeeds by way of its outlandish story line as much as by its singular voice.”
The Responsible Party
After police investigating a decades-old murder come looking for her mother, a disgraced influencer digs into her family’s past and uncovers the wild, tangled history of generations of women famous for surviving the impossible.
Claire’s 5 Picks
A 5-star-worthy book you’d recommend to anyone?
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet. I don't even know anything about the Bible, and for years I haven't been able to shut up about this book. If anything, the book's guiding text is Frog and Toad. Apocalyptic, funny, and tender.
Best TV show you’ve watched recently?
I used to almost exclusively watch Housewives, but they've lost their luster to me recently. I watched all of the Vanderpump Rules spin-off The Valley with gusto, but I can hardly call that the best TV show I've watched recently, though I could probably write a 3,000-word manifesto on it if given the opportunity.
I turned to Widow's Bay earlier this summer, and I'm so glad that I did. I love a multi-generational nautical story where something ain't quite right in the water.
Best movie you’ve watched recently?
We watched Robert Redford's The Outlaw Trail documentary on YouTube where he spends three weeks riding on horseback through a historic trail with a camera crew. He wrote an accompanying book that we found at an antique mall that alerted us to the presence of the film. Red shows us ghost towns and other places in the Southwest, particularly in Utah where I live, that were already busted in 1978 and virtually non-existent now. It's a remarkable archival piece.
A hidden gem you wish more people knew about?
This Is My House, a BBC show partially available on YouTube. Five British people claiming to have the same name give a presenter a tour of a home that they all claim is theirs and theirs alone. A panel watching has to determine who is not lying.
I also loved both seasons of LOL: Last One Laughing UK. I tried to play along and not laugh during each episode and never made it far. I love Bob Mortimer!
Go-to weekly podcast?
I've listened to Hollywood Handbook every week for the last decade and change. I think the podcast's original intent was to be a send-up of insider LA comedy culture where two smart, fairly sheepish guys pretended to be dickwad know-it-alls, but it almost immediately devolved into something less conceptual. It's bizarre and ineffable but always makes me laugh and screen-record bits to send to my sister and our friend Megan.
I've been a proud Who? Weekly wholigan since Day 1. I fall asleep to back episodes of Threedom several nights a week. They're like my little friends singing me to sleep. And they're always singing.
Pix: Where did the idea for The Responsible Party first come from, and when did you realize you knew what you wanted the novel to look like? What made you choose autofiction for this novel instead of going with straight-up fiction or memoir?
CC: As is true for the narrator "Claire Carusillo" in the book, I've been haunted since I was a child by the true story of shipwrecks and mistaken identity weathered by my great-great-grandmother Fanny Mounsey and my great-great-aunt Sarah Mounsey. Their messed-up siren song has always pulled me in, and they were always at the core of the book I wanted to write. I also knew that I was never going to be able to research my way into the exact truth of what happened to them, so I was never all that interested in writing a non-fiction book about them. In some ways, I'm too self-centered of a writer to not put myself into my work, so I always wanted to be a part of it, too.
Pix: Who are the authors who inspire you?
CC: Lydia Millet is my favorite author right now: she observes living through climate change and apocalyptic events as a funny person, and I hoped to emulate that end-of-the-world hum in the background of The Responsible Party. Her book A Children's Bible will continue to inspire for years to come. Ditto Miriam Toews. All My Puny Sorrows, which I wasn't introduced to until I was a graduate student in Leslie Jamison's class, changed my life. Vladimir Nabokov taught me narrators don't have to be telling the whole truth for a book to say something honest. Whenever someone comes into my bookstore Storyboard looking for a "classic," I suggest Pale Fire. Should be required reading in middle school.
Pix: If The Responsible Party was turned into a movie or series, who would make up your dream cast?
CC: There's a (somewhat delusional) observation by the narrator in the text that Kath, her mother, would ideally be played by Catherine O'Hara when the murder-mystery plotline got made into an in-book-universe prestige drama series. I've loved Catherine O'Hara ever since her “God Loves A Terrier” song in Best in Show, and she was taken from us too soon. The rest of my cast is stacked: Elsie Fisher from Eighth Grade as young Kath. Chris Fleming as Ron. Ivy Wolk as young Kath's best friend Marcy. Tom Schwartz from Vanderpump Rules can make his return to acting and be Irving, the aging playboy scion who lives in the lighthouse in 1971. Swoosie Kurtz from Pushing Daisies can be old Fanny and Frances McDormand can be old Sarah. The Fanning sisters made juuuust a touch homelier can be young Fanny and Sarah.