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Fun,
Adventurous,
Brilliant

3 reviews

Family Fang
by Kevin Wilson

Published: 2011-09-01
Paperback : 320 pages
10 members reading this now
9 clubs reading this now
2 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 3 of 3 members
'Great art is difficult' that's the motto of the Family Fang. What's even more difficult is being raised by great artists. Just ask Buster and Annie, who spent their childhood starring in their parents' madcap performance art pieces. After all, when your art lies in subverting normality, it can be ...
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Introduction

'Great art is difficult' that's the motto of the Family Fang. What's even more difficult is being raised by great artists. Just ask Buster and Annie, who spent their childhood starring in their parents' madcap performance art pieces. After all, when your art lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise a normal family. Now that Buster and Annie have grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it a struggle to adjust to life outside the fishbowl of their parents' strange world. But when the lives they've built come crashing down, they have nowhere left to go but home, where their parents plan for one last performance that is to be their magnum opus, whether the kids agree to participate or not. It's their most ambitious project yet, and it brings the Fangs to the difficult decision about what's ultimately more important: their family or their art. 'A comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. I have never seen anything like it before. The best single word description would be brilliant.' Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto 'Every time I thought about this book, it made me smile; every time I opened it, it made me laugh. The Family Fang is such a unique work that turning 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. ' Josh Weil, author of The New Valley

Editorial Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011: For outré performance artists, Caleb and Camille Fang, everything in life is secondary to art, including their children. Annie and Buster (popularly known as Child A. and Child B.) are the unwilling stars of their parents? chaotically subversive work. Art is truly a family affair for the Fangs. Years later, their lives in disarray, Annie and Buster reluctantly return home in search of sanctuary?only to be caught up in one last performance. The Family Fang sparkles with Kevin Wilson?s inventive dialogue and wonderfully rendered set-pieces that capture the surreal charm of the Fang?s most notable work. With this brilliant novel, the family Fang is destined to join the families Tenenbaum and Bluth as paragons of high dysfunction.--Shane Hansanuwat

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Book Club Recommendations

Member Reviews

Overall rating:
 
 
  "Family Fang"by stefanie g. (see profile) 09/06/12

This book is laugh out loud funny at parts at how ridiculous it is. A fun read.

 
  "Child A. and Child B. Fang"by Lynn W. (see profile) 04/21/12

Highly recommend for book clubs. I don't think discussion would - really, even could - lag.

 
  "funny"by tonya t. (see profile) 12/22/11

very funny, interesting insight on how parents actions effect children

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