For 10 years, Midway’s Claire Carusillo had a ghost on her shoulder. She was haunted by the story of her family — extraordinary women who experienced trials through shipwrecks, post-traumatic stress and the trappings of everyday life after the fact. But when Carusillo tells the story via her book, “The Responsible Party,” she hopes readers will take away that all memories are corrupt in some way. No tale, she said, is exactly and factually accurate.  “Everyone in some way is an unreliable narrator,” Carusillo said. “That doesn’t mean that the story is untruthful to the person telling it, though.” Her autofictional storytelling blends witty prose with modern banter, weaving in a namesake character that makes calamitous mistakes here and there. Plus, it’s somewhat of a murder mystery. “The Responsible Party” will be released on Tuesday. Already, Carusillo has received rave reviews from publications such as The New York Times.  Carusillo’s novel “succeeds by way of its outlandish story line as much as by its singular voice,” according to The Times’ Elizabeth McKenzie. Ahead of the book’s big release, The Park Record editor Don Rogers published his own praise.  “Claire Carusillo of Midway wrote a crazy novel, and an imprint of a Big Five publisher picked it up,” Rogers said. “You don’t know how big of a deal that is.” Rightfully so, Carusillo is overjoyed by the praise. In addition, Carusillo is on her way to achieving one of her life goals to mimic the everyday of author Ann Patchett (“Tom Lake,” “The Dutch House,” “Whistler”), who owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, while keeping up with a string of bestselling releases.  Carusillo herself recently became a bookshop owner. But she and partner Galen DeKemper went one step further: It’s not just a bookshop, but also a skate shop and coffee shop. The shotgun-style Storyboard on Midway’s Main Street takes visitors from coffee to skating and used and new books one room at a time.  DeKemper and Carusillo opened the doors of Storyboard to the Wasatch Back community and beyond in June.  “This does rock,” Carusillo said. “Now that we might be entering into a time in this store where people are talking to me about something that I wrote, it seems like basically the ideal way to spend a workday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.” As Carusillo discussed her new novel’s release on Sunday evening, she sat on the porch of Storyboard, next-door to her Midway home. Looking at everything she had built from the ground up with DeKemper, she reflected on the past 10 years and when she started crafting the novel that would, today, become “The Responsible Party.” “I always had wanted to do something with this family story of mine about these shipwrecks and the myth that I sort of grew up with, but I never started writing this story until I was in grad school for fiction at Columbia,” Carusillo said. “The interesting thing about this book is that I kind of started and never stopped writing it.” For a long time, Carusillo’s namesake character, Claire Carusillo, did not have a name. Real-life Carusillo said she gave the narrator her own name for a reason.  “She does quite resemble the way that I think about things or process the world,” Carusillo said.  Book Claire, however, is more “unfettered” in the way she talks to people. It’s possible, Carusillo said, that she’s “quicker or more observant.”  “She’s certainly a version of myself that is maybe a worse version, at least a person with a younger mind who is less patient,” Carusillo said.  Her antics keep the storyline moving. So do the tales of the unsinkable Mounsey women: Fanny, who washed ashore in England in 1915 nearly a year after her family’s first (yes, first) encounter with shipwrecks; and her daughter, Sarah, who survived the Lusitania’s downfall as she journeyed to collect her mother.  Midwestern icons, Carusillo calls them.  Carusillo said the “thorn” of the past 10 years of her book-writing journey was the realization that no “magical muse” would come to her. “It just took work to get this done. It maybe even took a decade of work to get this done,” Carusillo said. “The realization that nobody was going to save me was tough.” Getting the work done was worth it, she said. She said it has been a “fascinating” experience in toiling with obscurity and working toward a feet-on-the-ground kind of career that’s far from an aside.  “I think what I’ve learned maybe, and maybe this is something to take away, is that if a book or story or any creative project is haunting you, there’s probably a reason for that,” Carusillo said.  As Carusillo experiences reviews rolling in for her debut novel, the author said she is attempting to stay grounded through junk journaling and more writing. For personal reflection this time.  “The fact that I have a day job has been extremely grounding as well,” Carusillo said.  The book comes out on Tuesday. Carusillo celebrates her win with a party at Storyboard Monday evening.  Carusillo will embark on a small book tour afterward. On Aug. 19, Carusillo will appear at an author talk in New York City. Then, off to The Book Box for another event in Draper. She ends with a Sept. 4 reading in Las Vegas.  Preorder a copy of “The Responsible Party” at square.link/u/0dN8LOTf. The post ‘The Responsible Party’ book release is a decade in the making appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less