The Family Fang

By: Kevin Wilson

Narrated by: Therese Plummer

Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief.

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.

Filled with Kevin Wilson's endless creativity, vibrant prose, sharp humor, and keen sense of the complex performances that unfold in the relationships of people who love one another, The Family Fang is a masterfully executed tale that is as bizarre as it is touching.

©2011 Kevin Wilson (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"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." (Amazon.com review; Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011)

Art

Originality in story telling.
Very very good. Great narration makes or breaks audible listening. Therese Plummer makes it!!

Unexpectedly Rich

This was one of those books that I expected would fill my drive to work nicely, but I didn't really start listening with huge expectations for a lasting impression. I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself totally drawn in by the reader, laughing out loud within the first 5 minutes of the Fang family's first "event." The story is great, but it's the detail with which their individual and collective personalities are shaped that makes this such a great listen. Even during the funniest moments, there is a lingering sadness which follows the family, and during their saddest moments there is still a bizarre humor which eases their awkward pain. Therese Plummer's performance is hypnotic, and she renders each character's voice uniquely - usually I shut off my book when I pull into my driveway and resume it the next morning on my way to work, but Plummer made it impossible to find a good place to end it. I ended up listening to this while I did dishes, while I folded laundry, pretty much any time I could think of a chore to justify it. The last chapter I gave up looking for pretext, got into bed and listened through to the end before falling asleep. The author makes art a character in the story, fittingly the type of chaotic art that his characters chase and/or avoid so fervently. He makes emotion a tangible thing that you can visualize as you listen, seeing it in color and movement. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and I will look for more books read by the narrator.

Quirky redefined!

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No. I can't think of a friend who I believe would enjoy it.

What could Kevin Wilson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

It is probably perfect for someone who wants to read about intentional dysfunction, chaos without payoff, and a random acts of unkindness. Randomness can be charming, but in this case I found it unembracable.

Which character – as performed by Therese Plummer – was your favorite?

The whacked out psycho mom. Her pathetic character is so well defined.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No.

Any additional comments?

I'd pass. Life is too short for so-so books.

And you thought your family was dysfunctional?

Loved everything about this book: the story, the characters, the impeccable narration. It's a great book if you like novels about children whose first (and perhaps greatest) accomplishment is to survive their weird, messed up families. (You will want to run the Fang parents over in your car, but you will also be cheering for Child A and Child B, Annie and Buster, the whole way through.) It`s also a great book about art and what it means to create something. Usually I hate reading descriptions of art in books, but the Fangs' horrible performance pieces were an awful delight.

Unusual book

These are not likable people, however, the book is very well written and very well narrated. You find yourself cheering for the children of this odd couple to succeed in life in spite of their parents.

Too deep and too pat at the same time

I was sucked in to this story. It's emotionally very complex...so the resolution was altogether too easy. I ended it feeling disappointed. Ultimately, this story was too shallow for its own depth. I like to listen to audiobooks a couple of times. I won't be listening to this one twice...but I didn't make that decision until the very end.

A Kevin Wilson classic

Begin with the philosophy that in the real world, a parent’s job is to mess their children up horribly so the kids can spend the rest of their lives putting themselves back together. If that’s the case, in Kevin Wilson’s world, the job of an author is to create characters who mess their children up so horribly that the reader can’t bear to look away—but to do so with an unspoken, unwritten understanding that in the end, the kids really will be okay.

This is the promise of The Family Fang. Parents and other adults betray children’s trust and manipulate them in ways the reader knows all too well will damage them for life. But fans of Wilson’s work trust the quirky author to somehow bring the children to the brink and back again to something resembling safety.

I was joyfully surprised to find the plot to one of Wilson’s other novels featured pivotally in the plot of this book. His book Nothing to See Here remains my all-time favorite Audible read, with children who spontaneously combust.

The vocal performance in The Family Fang is outstanding and mostly consistent. That’s no small feat with such a broad cast of characters entering into the lives of Annie and Buster Fang.

Kevin Wilson is a celebrated addition to the long tradition of quirky Southern storytellers.

It’s a good book.

This is a good book, an easy listen, and narration is great. I wouldn’t say it’s the best book, but worth a listen if you’re looking for something easy and mindless.

So funny!

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and made me laugh out loud .

Great characters!

Kevin Wilson knows how to keep a story interesting! I love his characters development and the twists and turns in his stories. The narrator does a great job too. Double thumbs up!