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Loading... The Family Fangby Kevin Wilson
  
No current Talk conversations about this book. Unfamiliar with Kevin Wilson I noticed this book on the 'Staff Recommendation' rack and am SO glad I checked it out and read it. I laughed, wondered and laughed some more as I read the tale of the two Fang parents who are beyond performance artists in all ways imaginable. The stories of how they roped their two children, A & B, into the stunts they pulled which are being done purely as 'art' are hysterical. Years later the children grow weary of this as they seek to find themselves. This in itself is a challenge when you've been brought up in such a bent world. I loved the stories, narrative and execution of this book, though in all honesty, I was slightly let down by the ending. Regardless I highly recommend it and will be reading Kevin's other book shortly. (  ) Jonathan5 | Feb 20, 2023 |  I think Wilson is a good writer. This story was not my cup of tea, but his writing style and voice good enough to keep me interested till the end. (  ) JRobinW | Jan 20, 2023 | "He found something he could do. He could create conflict. He could see it through to the end. And when it was over, he was the only one left unharmed. He was, he decided without anyone else telling him, a writer." roseandisabella | Mar 18, 2022 | The Fang Family starts out with a family so extremely bizarre it is almost unbelievable. But Kevin Wilson knows how to convey feelings in his characters that are so real a reader can’t help but believe the unbelievable is true. A story about family and art, pragmatism and idealism, dreams-come-true and nightmares realized, The Fang Family will leave you wondering if there are any families immune to the wish-fulfillment of parents who either orchestra their lives around their children or force their children to orchestrate their lives around their parents. (  ) AngelaLam | Feb 8, 2022 | A silly escape novel with so much creativity. I admire authors who take risks like Wilson. ( ) JanEPat | Dec 7, 2021 |
 Somewhere between those happy families that Tolstoy felt were all alike and the unhappy families he claimed were unhappy in their own ways lie the quirky families we all love....With their eccentric relatives always up to crazy shenanigans, this vast fictional genealogy reflects our conflicted embarrassment and affection for the people who raised us....It’s a delightfully odd story about the adult children of a pair of avant-garde performance artists. Since leaving home, Annie and Buster Fang have done everything they can to avoid their parents’ outlandish behavior, but self-destructive wackiness seems to run in their genes. ..the poignant truth Wilson captures 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. Here, in the pages of this droll novel, is a chance to come home and make up.  But Mr. Wilson, though he writes wittily about various outré Fang performance pieces, resists putting too much emphasis on the family gimmick. These events have names (the kids’-singing-angers-heckler bit is loftily called “The Sound and the Fury”) and dates and artistic goals. But they also have consequences. That’s what makes this novel so much more than a joke. Mr. Wilson explores the damage inflicted on children raised in an atmosphere that is intentionally confusing. ...Although Mr. Wilson sometimes hints too neatly at where his book is headed, he manages to make the final stages genuinely shocking. This last part of “The Family Fang” packs a wallop because the rest of the book has been so quirky and seemingly light. But the stakes in the Fang war of wills get higher as the book proceeds, and they move from the specific to the universal. A Delightful Portrait Of The Screwball 'Family Fang...That's why it's such a minty fresh delight to open up Kevin Wilson's debut novel, The Family Fang, and feel the 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. ..Wilson might as well have been writing a review for his own strange and wonderful novel, for The Family Fang indeed reads as a work of "choreographed spontaneity" that will linger in your mind long after the mall has closed and the mess in the restaurant has been cleaned up.
Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist's work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents' madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents' strange world. When the lives they've built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance-- their magnum opus-- whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what's ultimately more important: their family or their art. The novel displays a keen sense of the complex performances that unfold in the relationships of people who love one another. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.63)
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