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The Family Fang: A Novel Paperback – April 17, 2012
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME, PEOPLE, SALON, AND ESQUIRE
“The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family….The best single word description would be brilliant.”
—Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto
A funny, poignant, laugh-and-cry-out-loud (sometimes at the same time) novel about the art of surviving a masterpiece of dysfunction. Meet The Family Fang, an unforgettable collection of demanding, brilliant, and absolutely endearing oddballs whose lives are risky and mischievous performance art. Basis for the major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman and Christopher Walken.
Annie and Buster Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents, Caleb and Camille. But when a bad economy and a few bad personal decisions converge, the two siblings have nowhere to turn but their family home. Reunited under one roof for the first time in more than a decade and surrounded by the souvenirs of their unusual upbringing, Buster and Annie are forced to confront not only their creatively ambitious parents, but the chaos and confusion of their childhood.
“It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart….A total blast.”
—Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEcco
- Publication dateApril 17, 2012
- Dimensions0.9 x 5.2 x 7.9 inches
- ISBN-109780061579059
- ISBN-13978-0061579059
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[A] delightfully quirky novel…completely relatable.” — People, Top 10 Books of 2011
“In his debut novel, Kevin Wilson expertly navigates between pathos and black comedy while negotiating a smart debate about the human cost of sacrificing all for one’s art. Fang has bite but is also incredibly fun.” — Time magazine, Top 10 Fiction Books of 2011
“Wilson writes stylishly...but his real skill is...building up a slow-drip mystery....And [this] isn’t the kind of book you [can] set aside....(I’m looking at you, Swamplandia!) It’s the kind of book in which you need to know what happens...It’s not what you think.” — Esquire, 10 Best Books of 2011
“First-time novelist Wilson mixes dire humor and melancholy in this satirical portrait of the uniquely dysfunctional Fangs––husband-and-wife performance artists Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Buster―and offers a scathing critique of how the baby-boom generation maltreated Gen X.” — Booklist Top Ten First Novels of 2011
“This book was my favorite for the sheer force of its creativity… powerful, funny and deeply strange. You won’t read anything else like it.” — Ann Patchett's Favorite Books of 2011 on Salon.com
“A wacky, wonderful debut about a performance artist couple and their long suffering kids.” — People
“My favourite novel so far this year: Kevin Wilson’s THE FAMILY FANG. Funny, smart, ingenious, moving, altogether great. Just buy it.” — Nick Hornby
“Wilson writes with the studied quirkiness of George Saunders or filmmaker Wes Anderson, and there’s some genuine warmth beneath all the surface eccentricity.” — Entertainment Weekly
“What can you say for a novel about performance artists that begins “Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief”? ... That it’s totally weird, and pretty wonderful. Most of all, that it manages to be brainy without sacrificing heart.” — O, the Oprah Magazine
” [A] revitalizing blast of original thought; robust invention; screwball giddiness.... a family story that’s out-of-the-box, and funny, and, also, genuinely moving. Wilson’s inventive genius never stops for a rest break.... [a] strange and wonderful novel...that will linger in your mind long after.” — NPR.org
“Irresistible…This strange novel deserves to be very successful…. Wilson’s trim and intriguing narrative [captures] the selling out of one’s life and children for the sake of notoriety…. I’d love to be able to see Annie’s movies and read Buster’s books, but I’ll settle for being Wilson’s fan instead.” — Time magazine
“A proud descendant of the Sycamores in Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You....[T]he poignant truth...beneath the humor of this peculiar family: Our crazy parents’ offenses sometimes loom so large that we don’t realize just what they did for us until it’s too late.” — Washington Post
“Wilson’s writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact…Wilson keeps his plot moving swiftly enough to keep readers absorbed. And those sentences are really something.” — Boston Globe
“This is not another novel about an educated upper-middle-class family wracked with dysfunction beneath the surface. Ma and Pa Fang, Camille and Caleb, are oddballs for all to see.” — New York Post
“Inventive and hilarious. This is complex psychological ground, and the 32-year-old Mr. Wilson navigates it with a calm experience that his tender age shouldn’t allow.” — Wall Street Journal
“Great art is difficult, Caleb Fang likes to say, but with this wonder of a first novel, Kevin Wilson makes it look easy.” — Los Angeles Times Magazine
“[Wilson] has created a memorable shorthand for describing parent-child deceptions and for ways in which creative art and destructive behavior intersect. But he never generalizes.... Whenever this book refers to “a Fang thing,” Mr. Wilson is utterly clear about what that means.” — Janet Maslin, New York Times
“Wilson’s creative and funny novel examines two young lives in the process of getting skewed, all in the pursuit of art with a capital A.” — The Must List, Entertainment Weekly
“Wilson, who drew comparisons to Shirley Jackson with his 2009 story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, brilliantly and hilariously explores the “art for art’s sake” argument.” — Fiction Chronicle, New York Times
“[A] wildly original new novel… bizarre, unique, unerringly comic, breathtakingly wonderful.... It’s the sort of book you love so much you want to compose sonnets in its name….If The Family Fang is any indication, [Wilson’s] got a long and productive career ahead, one we will enjoy immensely.” — Miami Herald
“Kevin Wilson introduces THE FAMILY FANG, a winningly bizarre clan on the brink.” — Vanity Fair
“Funny and fast-paced, Kevin Wilson’s debut brims with just-so observations about the anxiety of influence, parental and artistic.” — Financial Times
“With his debut story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Kevin Wilson demonstrated that he traffics in weirdness. His stories find space between plausibility and absurdity, and their strange plots have an easy pull. Wilson’s enjoyable first novel, The Family Fang, offers similar pleasures…” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Wilson’s wheelhouse is whimsy, and as in his story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, his characters’ quirks are both metaphors for and products of various larger maladies.” — Time Out Chicago
“Wild.... Kudos for wit and quirky imagination.” — Christian Science Monitor
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of art―from Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combust―and playfully describes them…The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” — Time Out New York
“…deliciously odd, delightfully unhinged and surprisingly warm-hearted…this year’s book to read.” — NBCMiami
“The kids are not all right in this debut novel about a brother and sister poorly navigating the bizarre world of their parents ― obsessive performance artists who force their children to participate in their kooky pieces.” — Los Angeles Magazine
“Funny and off-kilter….What could devolve into little more than slapstick becomes, in Wilson’s skilled hands and, let’s face it, somewhat strange imagination, a rich and textured read. He brings us to the brink of absurdity, then turns on a dime and delivers a deeper, darker novel.” — Chicago Tribune
“Something so calculated, so choreographed, so wickedly comic should feel fake. But oddly enough, as Annie and Buster stagger about in the warped but jaunty confines of The Family Fang... they gradually become so real you want to call them up and give them your therapist’s number.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of art―from Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combust―and playfully describes them…. The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” — Time Out New York
“[A] big-hearted and endlessly strange look into a family of artists…. With humor and adoration, Wilson... deftly realiz[es] each character’s emotional capacities and motivations....[A] taut and marvelously entertaining book.” — Dallas Morning News
“The Family Fang is a delicious book by a stunningly nimble writer. It never fails to entertain, but at the same time raises serious questions about art, interpretation, child-rearing, privacy, publicity and leaving home. I can’t wait to read what Kevin Wilson writes next.” — Houston Chronicle
“The Family Fang [is] at times is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s quirky, R-rated comedy, The Royal Tenanbaums, without losing its arch originality.” — Christian Science Monitor
“Wilson’s widely praised novel about performance artists gives a whole new meaning to the term dysfunctional family and may just leave you thinking more fondly of your own relatives in time for those summertime family reunions.” — CBSnews.com
“[B]rilliant…a well-plotted and intriguing story…intricate and funny...Wilson probes art by constructing art.” — Rain Taxi
“Literary fiction can be so straight-laced and serious that reading The Family Fang feels like sneaking a treat: here is a well-written, intelligent, and involving novel that’s also tremendously fun.” — Ploughshares
“A highly engaging and imaginative first novel…Wilson has a gift for characterization and dialogue.” — Art in America
“If I could marry a book, this would be the one.” — Three Guys, One Book Blog
“Beneath the surface of the fun and fast-paced The Family Fang, Wilson explores self-identity and families in the context of life lived as art… [A] well-crafted novel that examines what happens to a family when the line between art and life is erased.” — Shelf Awareness
“The comparisons of Wilson to other writers says less about his work than it does about our desire to understand his imagination. In simple terms, he is very funny, generous to all his characters, and the author of books you feel an immediate urge to reread.” — Bookslut
“The premise of this book is so perfect I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before …a hugely likable book -funny, colorful, and memorable, if not beautiful and strange…I read this book swiftly and compulsively, like sipping thirstily at a fruity cocktail on a hot summer evening.” — BookBrowse.com review
“The subtlety of the comedy is flawless, channeling the filmmaking of Wes Anderson or Rian Johnson. A fantastic first novel that asks if the kids are alright, finding answers in the most unexpected places.” — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“[A] bizarre, mirthful debut novel…leavened with humor.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[FAMILY FANG] allows Wilson to dazzle and amuse us with some very inventive and provocatively imagined performance art.” — BookPage
“Don’t be surprised if this becomes one of the most discussed novels of the year.” — Booklist
“In The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson presents a slyly hilarious novel that’s part social satire, part detective story, and part plain good storytelling. More engaging than A Visit from the Goon Squad, this family saga manages to be both hip and sweet at the same time.” — Publishers Weekly
“I recently read Kevin Wilson’s novel THE FAMILY FANG, which is so strange and original and hysterically funny. It’s about a husband and wife who are performance artists and force their young children to be part of their art project. It’s a book like nothing else.” — Ann Patchett, Time Magazine
“It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart. Here, finally, is a much needed reminder that astute fiction can still be a total blast.” — Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way
“Wilson commands the cavalry riding around the vastly important Army of the Loopy... rides slashing from the Implausible to the Plausible, and from there quickly to the Necessary and on to the True. The Family Fang will appear Coenized out of Hollywood but you should catch them here first.” — Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood
“Each page feels like unearthing a discovery. This is the kind of novel you fall in love with: tender-hearted, wonder-filled, a world all its own.... Wilson is such [a] talent, so rare and beautiful and big.” — Josh Weil, author of The New Valley
[Kevin Wilson] tells his madcap story with straight-faced aplomb, highlighting the tricky intersection of family life and artistic endeavor. All fiction readers will enjoy this comic/tragic look at domesticity.” — Library Journal
“Kevin Wilson’s novel, The Family Fang, was one of the most talked about titles at BEA…[The Family Fang has] the whimsy reminiscent of a Wes Anderson flick…Wilson pulls the fuzzy line between art and life very taut…” — Publishers Weekly Fall Preview: Top Ten Literary Fiction
“The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. Like everything else Kevin Wilson does, I have never seen anything like it before. The best single word description would be genius.” — Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder
From the Back Cover
Annie and Buster Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents, Caleb and Camille. But when a bad economy and a few bad personal decisions converge, the two siblings have nowhere to turn but their family home. Reunited under one roof for the first time in more than a decade and surrounded by the souvenirs of their unusual upbringing, Buster and Annie are forced to confront not only their creatively ambitious parents, but the chaos and confusion of their childhood.
Written with tremendous heart, wit, and honesty, Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang is a "comedy, a tragedy, and a tour de force....The best single-word description would be genius" (Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder).
About the Author
Kevin Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Nothing to See Here, which was a Read with Jenna book club selection; The Family Fang, which was adapted into an acclaimed film starring Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman; and Perfect Little World; as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award; and Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.
Product details
- ASIN : 006157905X
- Publisher : Ecco; Reprint edition (April 17, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780061579059
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061579059
- Item Weight : 8.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 0.9 x 5.2 x 7.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #47,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,501 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #2,012 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #4,331 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Kevin Wilson is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel The Family Fang (Ecco, 2012), Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017), and Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019) as well as the collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine (Ecco, 2018). His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Rivendell, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of the South.
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Camille and Caleb Fang, the husband and wife team at the center of Wilson's novel, are presented as performance artists so outré as almost to inhabit an alternate universe (as it happens, Hazzard County, Tennessee). Perfectly matched in the belief that all conventional art is dead, the Fangs dedicate themselves to the premise that art must move, must unfold in ways unknown and unexpected. In short, their performance pieces ambush the spectator to create chaos. That these pieces are frequently dangerous--staged shootings, near self-immolations, motorcycle stunts, fake robberies--is a risk Caleb and Camille accept as necessary to lives dedicated to creating art. The unexpected arrival of children, however--first daughter Annie and then son Buster--puts a crimp in the Fang master plan. That is, until the new parents discover that it is possible to intertwine family and art so tightly that they cannot be untangled.
This premise takes root in an early scene when Annie, still a babe in arms, is so frightened by a department store Santa that she inspires a shopping mall-wide pandemonium. Camille, new to motherhood and confused in the face of her child's distress, remarks, "She's a baby, Caleb," to which Caleb replies, "She's a Fang. That supersedes everything else."
It is a seminal moment. Rather than parental concern, the new parents experience awe: Annie can make things move. Children, it seems, can be made into art.
Soon the family foursome is trolling shopping malls, restaurants, and other venues throughout the Southeast in pursuit of the artistic moment. Indeed, Annie and Buster, now referred to by their parents (not always affectionately) as child "A" and child "B," play important (sometimes well rehearsed, sometimes impromptu) roles in these family set pieces--performances that Wilson presents as vignettes interspersed throughout his novel. A brief sampling:
· "Crime and Punishment, 1985" (candy store theft exposed);
· "The Last supper, 1985" (French restaurant encounters of the emetic kind);
· "The Portrait of a Lady, 1988" (Fang progeny hijacks beauty pageant; but which child is it--A or B?)
But even the best-matched artistic troupes can fall apart when one or more cast members feels excluded from the creative process. For the family Fang, that moment arrives via Shakespeare and a high school production ("More Woe, 1995") that features the Fang siblings in starring roles (to say any more would be to spoil the fun).
Soon A and B go on to separate careers--Annie, not surprisingly, to semi-success as a Hollywood movie actress, Buster to a lack-luster career as a freelance journalist and experimental novelist. Yet neither can escape the Fang legacy, an inheritance that seems to drive them in to acting on their worst instincts.
Years later, after separate but equally spectacular career blunders, the siblings are brought together again under their parents' roof and soon find themselves unwitting participants in what looks to be another Fang piece--perhaps their parents greatest yet--that may or may not have been planned. Angry at what might be another artistic shut out, fearful that their parents may actually have abandoned them physically as well as emotionally this time, A & B undertake detective work aimed at thwarting what they hope is supposed to be their parents artistic masterpiece (much of what follows in this section of the novel falls into red herring territory but is nonetheless entertaining).
Without giving away too much about the novel's conclusion, Wilson provides some evidence that Annie and Buster have begun to emerge from their abnormally prolonged adolescences. As is often the case when children negotiate the transition to adulthood, the Fang siblings are increasingly shaped by their meaningful peer relationships. Apparently there are ways and means (like maybe falling in love?) of giving way to one's worst instincts--instincts that run deep in the Fang gene pool--and still surviving.
Perhaps it is a musical ditty sung by A & B in one of the family's earliest performance pieces, and which shows up for a return engagement at novel's end, that best captures Annie's and Buster's maturation process--albeit in language that only a Fang would likely appreciate:
"It's a sad world. It's unforgiving," the lyrics proclaim. "Kill all parents, so you can keep living," its sometimes metaphoric, and sometimes not, admonition.
Jack Andrew Urquhart is the author of several works of fiction, including So They Say Collected Stories.
The plot focuses on Caleb and Camille Fang, performance artists for whom art is their entire life, and whose work revolves around creating abnormal situations in public places and filming the reactions of oblivious observers. Once their children, Annie and Buster (or "Child A" and "Child B," as they are known in the art world) are born, Caleb and Camille immediately begin to integrate their children into their "art," with and without their knowledge. In one such example, Annie and Buster perform original songs on stage in front of an audience. Neither knows how to play an instrument or sing, but the children eagerly perform a series of terrible songs in an attempt to earn money to pay for an operation for their (nonexistent) dog. While a crowd gathers and onlookers encourage the children, Cecilia and Caleb lurk in the audience, heckling the children with jeers including, "You're terrible!" and "I hope your dog dies!" The aftermath, as predicted by the Fangs, involves half of the crowd jumping to the defense of the children, while the other half joins in the angry protest, even as the children begin to cry.
The story alternates between stories of such family adventures and the lives of Annie and Buster in present day, both of whom are struggling to establish an identity separate from "The Family Fang" and to overcome the abnormality of their childhood. Normally I find this technique to be confusing and distracting, but in this case, I truly enjoyed it. Wilson provides just enough information that you understand what's happening and why, but you don't get bogged down in background information or over-explanation. By immediately revealing information including the fact that Annie is now an Oscar-nominated actress and drawing you into Buster's adventures while in Nebraska on a freelance writing assignment, the reader becomes instantly invested in their individual journeys, as well as their family's history. This device also serves to establish the distinctive voice of each family member, with the family dynamic itself almost becoming it's own unique character.
I truly found the book to be unique, observant, funny, bizarre, and insightful, and I was impressed by the thought, creativity, and imagination put into developing the ideas for the various "performances." I struggled a bit with the second half of the book, in which an element of mystery is introduced (in my notes, I simple wrote, "it gets weird..."), but I'd still happily recommend this book. While some "literary fiction" can read as beautiful, yet dull, The Family Fang is a very well-written AND highly entertaining novel.
Despite my disappointment, I'm giving the book three stars because there were very strong points throughout. The pure originality of the different wacky scenarios described were a blast to read. I also very much enjoyed the dynamic and complexities of the relationship between Buster and Annie - if their relationship would have been the focal point of the book, rather than their relationship with their parents, I might have been a lot more interested. And finally, the style of writing itself was very strong and a pleasure to read. The image of Annie with a match burning out in her hand was haunting and lovely, and it's been stuck in my head ever since finishing the novel.
Overall, I would recommend this book, but I caution readers - if you take it too seriously, it is a depressing and almost horrifying tale, but if you go into it realizing that it really is a bizarre, almost fantastical story, you will most likely enjoy and appreciate it.
Top reviews from other countries
This story is about how they struggle to cope with being adults and deal with the way their obscure upbringing makes them feel about their parents.
There were bits of this book that made me gasp with shock, particularly some of the performance pieces, and I sat in a pub telling my husband and his friend about it, and both of them laughed at some of the stories I was able to tell.
I loved it - very funny, very different.
Ach ja, Buch wurde auf englisch gelesen. Ist zu schaffen mit ein bisschen Englischkentnissen, nicht allzu schwer. Vieles ergibt sich ganz einfach aus dem Zusammenhang.