"Compelling."―Literary Review
"An irresistibly anxious book."―The Washington Post
"A family drama with a shocking twist."―The New York Times
"I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!"―Oprah Winfrey
When the Cassidy-Shaws' driverless minivan fatally collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat. His father, Noah, is beside him, and in the back with his younger siblings is his mother, Lorelei—a renowned AI researcher'''who is lost in her work.
During a weeklong retreat on the Chesapeake Bay, the Cassidy-Shaws wrestle with the moral fallout of the crash as a routine police enquiry starts to unravel. As Lorelei's increasingly odd behaviour stirs her husband's suspicions that there may be a darker truth behind the incident, the arrival of tech billionaire Daniel Monet (who has a mysterious history with Lorelei) cements them. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenage daughter, tensions among the Cassidy-Shaws reach breaking point.
A psychosocial thriller and a propulsive family drama, Culpability explores a world newly shaped by non-human forces such as chatbots and autonomous cars, and forces us to examine our own relationship to artificial intelligence, and the nuanced ways in which we are all, in fact, culpable.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"An irresistibly anxious book."―The Washington Post
"A family drama with a shocking twist."―The New York Times
"I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!"―Oprah Winfrey
When the Cassidy-Shaws' driverless minivan fatally collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat. His father, Noah, is beside him, and in the back with his younger siblings is his mother, Lorelei—a renowned AI researcher'''who is lost in her work.
During a weeklong retreat on the Chesapeake Bay, the Cassidy-Shaws wrestle with the moral fallout of the crash as a routine police enquiry starts to unravel. As Lorelei's increasingly odd behaviour stirs her husband's suspicions that there may be a darker truth behind the incident, the arrival of tech billionaire Daniel Monet (who has a mysterious history with Lorelei) cements them. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenage daughter, tensions among the Cassidy-Shaws reach breaking point.
A psychosocial thriller and a propulsive family drama, Culpability explores a world newly shaped by non-human forces such as chatbots and autonomous cars, and forces us to examine our own relationship to artificial intelligence, and the nuanced ways in which we are all, in fact, culpable.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Culpability is a wildly timely book, an exploration of the ethics of the technology age tucked inside a gripping story about family and loyalty. It's equally emotional, entertaining, and important, and I lingered over every page." - Janelle Brown
"Culpability is a thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence - and where they all intersect. A wise, propulsive, and deeply powerful novel." - Laura Dave
"Culpability is whip-smart, fascinating, and gripping. It reads fast like a thriller, but this novel takes on the great cultural challenges of today: AI, electronic surveillance, and billionaire culture. A successful but fragile family collides with these forces and wrestles them down to life-size. I was recommending this book to friends before I'd even finished it." - Stephen P Kiernan
"A fascinating, thought-provoking novel. Bruce Holsinger is a master at combining revelatory social commentary about important, timely issues (AI this time) with deeply moving insights about family dynamics. I highly, highly recommend this book." - Angie Kim
"In Culpability, Bruce Holsinger brings his sharp eye and fearless storytelling to one of the most urgent questions of our time: What does it mean to be responsible in a world shaped by systems we no longer fully control? Part family drama, part techno-thriller, this riveting novel traces the moral fallout of a self-driving car crash through the lens of a fractured family. With piercing insight and deep compassion, Holsinger captures the unsettling drift between human intention and algorithmic consequence - never losing sight of the fragile, fallible people at the heart of the story. Gripping, wise, and eerily prescient, Culpability is a family novel for the age of AI." - Christina Baker Kline
"Bruce Holsinger has written a novel that is as propulsive as it is thought-provoking, a thriller with a brain. Reminiscent of the work of Richard Powers and Don DeLillo, Culpability is a compelling narrative about the perils of the digital age while addressing the challenges of living as a family. This novel might feel futuristic, except it isn't. It's happening now." - Mary Morris
"Culpability is a thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence - and where they all intersect. A wise, propulsive, and deeply powerful novel." - Laura Dave
"Culpability is whip-smart, fascinating, and gripping. It reads fast like a thriller, but this novel takes on the great cultural challenges of today: AI, electronic surveillance, and billionaire culture. A successful but fragile family collides with these forces and wrestles them down to life-size. I was recommending this book to friends before I'd even finished it." - Stephen P Kiernan
"A fascinating, thought-provoking novel. Bruce Holsinger is a master at combining revelatory social commentary about important, timely issues (AI this time) with deeply moving insights about family dynamics. I highly, highly recommend this book." - Angie Kim
"In Culpability, Bruce Holsinger brings his sharp eye and fearless storytelling to one of the most urgent questions of our time: What does it mean to be responsible in a world shaped by systems we no longer fully control? Part family drama, part techno-thriller, this riveting novel traces the moral fallout of a self-driving car crash through the lens of a fractured family. With piercing insight and deep compassion, Holsinger captures the unsettling drift between human intention and algorithmic consequence - never losing sight of the fragile, fallible people at the heart of the story. Gripping, wise, and eerily prescient, Culpability is a family novel for the age of AI." - Christina Baker Kline
"Bruce Holsinger has written a novel that is as propulsive as it is thought-provoking, a thriller with a brain. Reminiscent of the work of Richard Powers and Don DeLillo, Culpability is a compelling narrative about the perils of the digital age while addressing the challenges of living as a family. This novel might feel futuristic, except it isn't. It's happening now." - Mary Morris
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