The Family Fang

Kept my interest until the end....I was disappointed with the end. Seemed more should happen with the parents. I felt like the book wasn't complete. Overall, it kept up with my love of odd books, but the end just left me with a "_____" feeling. I wouldn't read it again.

What a sad state of affairs. Two very self-centered adults marry and have children, Child A and Child B. Their names alone are telling to how the story unfolds.

Celeste and Caleb are performers who, once their family is expanded with children, their performances incorporate these two innocents who are subject to their parents every dramatic whim. The characters evolve as the children grow up and try to form adult lives only to continue to have their parents influence the outcome.

Are their such parents? Should Child Protection Services take these children away from their parents? These are questions that came to mind while reading "The Family Fang". It was a unique read.

I liked the way this novel moved between childhood memories and how they effected the adult children. All of the characters were well drawn and I was engaged with their lives. It would make a thoughtful movie, and intact, seemed to be written with that in mind.

I downloaded the Kindle version of The Family Fang. Enjoyed it thoroughly! Pretty weird and funny and disasterous and victorious. Lots of surprises with one BIG one toward the end. Very fun read. Kevin Wilson has a good writing style that carried me excitedly through the twists and turns of the bizarre Family Fang. I'd like to read some more of his work. Also love my Kindle!

Not too crazy about the book's format. The writing is good! Liked the character development evolution.
would recommend to my fellow artists who have also been through some of these real life creative dilemmas.

Honestly i hate reading. But I love writing. The only reason why i bought this book was because my name is kevin wilson. So yeah i was going around telling people i wrote the book. Jokingly of course. But one day someone asked me what the book was about and i would answer saying something like its about the family's fang as a thing. Boy was i wrong. It is about the family named fang. But as i read the book more and understand it fully i learned to love it. Its great. And keep in mind i hate reading. This book is so fun and cleaver. The review ask us if we would recommend this book hell i bought it for people.

Honestly i hate reading. But I love writing. The only reason why i bought this book was because my name is kevin wilson. So yeah i was going around telling people i wrote the book. Jokingly of course. But one day someone asked me what the book was about and i would answer saying something like its about the family's fang as a thing. Boy was i wrong. It is about the family named fang. But as i read the book more and understand it fully i learned to love it. Its great. And keep in mind i hate reading. This book is so fun and cleaver. The review ask us if we would recommend this book hell i bought it for people.

Author Kevin Wilson explores that question in a unique manner in his new novel, "The Family Fang". And the ultimate answer, I suppose, is that a family is whatever combination it wants to be, or DOESN'T want to be.

The Fang Family, mother Camille, father Caleb, and children A (Annie) and B (Buster), are conceptual performance artists who put on their productions in shopping malls in the South. The parents had conceived of their work and then incorporated their children in the acts since birth. In many cases, the parents put their children in physical danger from an early age, all in the name of "artistic license". Leaving a six year old to wander around a mall alone, for instance, doesn't constitute good parenting in my book. But if the Fangs were physically negligent of their two children, they were even more so psychologically. Annie and Buster grew up in a house where nothing was as it seemed and no relationship seemed based on affection - rather based on the childrens' ability to perform in the art acts.

It seems true to me that children growing up with unstable parents in a slap-dash household, often become more mature than the parents who are supposed to be parenting them. This is the case in the Fang family as the children, "A" and "B" as they're known in the art world, mature into adults. But damaged children often grow into damaged adults, as "mature" as they may seem to others looking in - particularly as compared to the parents. As the two children grew up, Annie to become a respected young actress and Buster a novelist of middling success, they find themselves unable to relate in a "normal" relationship. They have each other as support as their parents slip away into their own twosome world. It is up to Annie and Buster, as they reach their late 20's, to finally find "adult" adulthood.

When I read the reviews of "The Family Fang" and saw the cover art, I imagined it to be a "precious" book, filled with "precious" people doing delightfully "oddball" things. Sort of like "A Taxonomy of Barnacles", a novel by Galt Niederhoffer, published a few years ago. That book was filled with cloyingly cute people and I basically stopped reading midway through and threw the book hard against the wall. "Save me", I screamed, "from 'precious' characters and plot lines!" So I picked up Kevin Wilson's novel with trepidation, figuring the wall could use another gauge, if need be. But, I was pleasantly surprised. His characters WERE, in a way "precious", but in a comfortably interesting way. Some of the characters were likable, some not, but all were presented in a nuanced manner. I honestly could not guess the ending of the book before I was there.

Wilson's book is a wonderful read about interesting people who make interesting decisions about their lives. It's a hard road to adulthood, sometimes, but Annie and Buster are up to the challenge. And so's the reader.

This is our book club selection for this month. So I did read the entire book although there were times I wanted to quit. The characters are well defined although weird people, but then, there are a lot of weird people in our world. I was just thankful that I wasn't brought up in that family!

Did not care for the inappropriate language, even though it is used in today's modern speech. There were a few very humorous lines, but for the most part, it was too far fetched. The ending was poor, because it was not satisfying.

According to some reviews, the imagination and style of the author's writing are thought to be good; I guess I can agree with that. But basically, I was angry and disgusted at the parents throughout the book. Also, I personally don't like the "F" word throughout; I find no need for it. But to each his own!

When I read that many found the book hilarious, I should have known that I wouldn't. What can I say but that I found the book utterly depressing with not a modicum of inspiration. By their definition of performance art-- chaos, intense emotion, unexpected reactions, unique experience--war is performance art. To leave children with no "solid illusion" of a reality is to leave them rudderless or able to thrive in any circumstance. This book favored the former. To what end? Psychosis as performance art?

It also depresses me that this book received accolades and literary prizes. What are we calling great these days?

Childish and contrived. My adult daughter is a performance artist and I thought this book would help me understand her and her work a little better. Instead, it was a complete waste of my time. I want a refund!

THE FAMILY FANG was an enjoyable read about a dysfunctional family. Think: Running with Scissors.

Camille and Caleb Fang are artists; however, not in the traditional sense. They like to stage shocking events and watch (and sometimes record) people's reactions. To them, that's real art. "This is what we do. This is what the Fangs do. We make strange and memorable things."

Inevitably, the Fangs have children and begin to involve them in their stunts, all in the name of art. Years of this (sometimes with the kids' prior awareness, sometimes not) results in some pretty messed-up kids who move away from their parents when they're old enough. Years later, unfortunate events in their own individual lives force the adult children to move back into their childhood home at the same time. Not too long afterwards, Camille and Caleb go missing and are thought to be the victims of a random killing. Knowing their parents' flare for staging events, their children have their doubts. And there lies the book's big mystery...

The author, Kevin Wilson, does a great job of alternating chapters between past and present. The past chapters are the ones that really shine, though. Each of these is a short story in itself about some event that the Fangs stage in the name of art. And each made me laugh, thinking how absurd they are.

The chapters set in the present continue the ongoing mystery of whether the Fangs staged their deaths or if they are really dead. Despite being curious myself about the truth, because these lacked the wit of the backstory chapters, I didn't find them as enjoyable.

The ending wasn't the ending I was predicting or hoping for, but it was satisfying nonetheless. I think the last chapter was unnecessary, though.

This was overall a great easy read, though, and I really do recommend it, if only to read about the wild stunts that the Fangs pulled.

This was a book group choice that generated quite an interesting discussion. Even though I didn't love this book, I really did enjoy A and B, oh, I mean, Annie and Buster! They are the children of Caleb and Camille Fang, two artists who pretty much live for their art. They are performance artists, who construct elaborate pranks on innocent bystanders and secretly film them. Once they have children, Annie and Buster become a part of these stunts.

At the start of the book, I laughed quite a bit. The book opens with the adult lives of Annie (an acotor) and Buster (a writer who has never been able to write another decent thing since his first novel, and is struggling as a features writer for a men's magazine). But as the book continues, I began to tire of the Fang's exploits. Some were slightly amusing, but I found them to be mostly just sad.

I think this author is trying to make a point, not only about family, but about art. Is art something you think is art? If you only have a very select audience, is your art still art? Is hurting someone, whether physically, emotionally, or both, (with or without their permission) art? Do you violate your children by making them participate in this kind of crazy performance art, or is it anymore damaging than say, taking them to your choice of place of worship?

This book was a little messy. There were times where I really grew tired of the Fangs and their exploits. Things began to feel too contrived, which they were of course! I certainly didn't like Caleb, and only disliked Camille a little less, and I don't have to adore the characters in any novel, but I do have to feel a human connection to them, at some point. I felt they were a dreadful family, and only felt sorrow for their children.

Not a happy book. I suspect I might not read anything else in the future by Kevin Wilson, since the writing style was not really to my liking. But an interesting novel, and one that really is great for discussion.

"The Fang Family" is a quirky, often amusing novel about a highly dysfunctional family. Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists whose medium Is to create small scale havoc in public places. They are frankly obsessed with their art and when their children, first Annie and then Buster, are born, they are forced to partake in these events despite the embarrassment this causes the children. The art is more important for Caleb and Camille than family values or the emotional security of the children.

The book's structure is to intersperse historic narratives about the artistic endeavors with stories told from the perspective of Annie and Buster, now both grown-up and moved away from their family. Annie is a disaster prone Hollywood actress and Buster is a struggling author who has resorted to sensationalist freelance journalism to earn a crust to offset his own struggling creativity. When the disaster quotient finally reaches a level, they both return to their parents' home, but if they were expecting a harmonious family re-union, they are much mistaken.

Annie in particular is a particularly well drawn, complex character and it was her story that carried the most emotional depth for me. Buster remains more loyal to his parents, while Annie recognizes the damage caused more clearly.

The heart of the story is very much along the lines of Philip Larkin's famous first line of his poem "This Be The Verse" about the impact parents have on your life. But it's also about what constitutes art and damaging obsessions. It's a highly entertaining book that is refreshingly quirky. Great fun.

Just finished this quick read. It was a real delight! The Fangs are complex, but light-hearted at the same time.
For those of us who grew up in "traditional" or "grimly conservative" homes, this is truly an abandon-all-cares novel
that stretches your imagination. I found it charming, in a weird way, that the son & daughter became fairly conventional
adults....a writer and an actress...despite the totally inept parenting that preceded their coming of age.
Would recommend this to anyone who enjoys light fantasy but shies away from science fiction. Again, this is a real delight!

I enjoyed this book a lot. Wilson is an excellent writer who throws in quite a bit of fun modern concepts, comedy, and well-placed profanity. My only problem is about the flashbacks to various historical family art projects. Like in other time-shifting books, I tended to like the main storyline the best and dreaded the flashbacks after a while.

There is some tough subject matter here. The family dynamics will hit close to home for some. But Wilson breaks it up with some romance and quirky characters - Buster and Annie are great protagonists. The art stuff is also interesting - what defines art and where is the division between life and art?

Sooo, overall I'd give this a 3.5. It got a little deep and uncomfortable in spots but came out strong in the end, and Wilson writes so damned well that it's definitely worth the effort.

I recently purchased this book on a trip to Sewanee. I found it entertaining, and creatively written. Full disclosure: I am an engineer by training. It is a combination comedy and tragedy, which is a difficult endeavor to pull off. The comedy part is done well. It reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, with the scenes of the Duke and King. The tragedy part revolves around the relationship of the parents and adult children, but I'm not sure of the author's message. Here the subject matter reminded me of The Optimist's Daughter. In summary, this is an unusual book and worth reading. It will be interesting to see how the movie version is handled.