What is art? And what is family?
These are two of the many questions you will find
yourself contemplating while (and for some time after) reading Kevin Wilson’s
debut novel.
The
Family Fang is the story of two siblings, Annie and Buster
Fang, the children of a pair of obsessively strange performance artists. For
their entire childhoods, Buster and Annie Fang were forced to take part in
ever-stranger art pieces as their parents sought to disrupt the normalcy in the
lives of those around them.
Now the Fang children are all grown up, with
problems of their own. While they have each created names for themselves, Annie
as an actress and Buster as a writer, they are facing a few bumps in the road.
In moments of desperation, they each find themselves back in their parent’s
house, hoping that a little time away from the world will do them good.
However, when their parents mysteriously disappear, Buster and Annie are thrown
right back into the utter chaos of Fang life and forced to decide for
themselves what it really means to live life and make art.
Kevin Wilson tells this tale with a deadpan sense
of humor and incredible sensitivity, and his creativity appears to be utterly
bottomless. If a work of art is (at least in part) something that makes you
think, this book is it.
