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商品の説明
内容説明
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.
メディア掲載レビュー
“[A] delightfully quirky novel…completely relatable.” (People, Top 10 Books of 2011 )
“In his debut novel, Kevin Wilson expertly navigates between pathos and black comedy while negotiating a smart debate about the human cost of sacrificing all for one’s art. Fang has bite but is also incredibly fun.” (Time magazine, Top 10 Fiction Books of 2011 )
“Wilson writes stylishly...but his real skill is...building up a slow-drip mystery....And [this] isn’t the kind of book you [can] set aside....(I’m looking at you, Swamplandia!) It’s the kind of book in which you need to know what happens...It’s not what you think.” (Esquire, 10 Best Books of 2011 )
“First-time novelist Wilson mixes dire humor and melancholy in this satirical portrait of the uniquely dysfunctional Fangshusband-and-wife performance artists Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Busterand offers a scathing critique of how the baby-boom generation maltreated Gen X.” (Booklist Top Ten First Novels of 2011 )
“This book was my favorite for the sheer force of its creativity… powerful, funny and deeply strange. You won’t read anything else like it.” (Ann Patchett's Favorite Books of 2011 on Salon.com )
“A wacky, wonderful debut about a performance artist couple and their long suffering kids.” (People )
“My favourite novel so far this year: Kevin Wilson’s THE FAMILY FANG. Funny, smart, ingenious, moving, altogether great. Just buy it.” (Nick Hornby )
“Wilson writes with the studied quirkiness of George Saunders or filmmaker Wes Anderson, and there’s some genuine warmth beneath all the surface eccentricity.” (Entertainment Weekly )
“What can you say for a novel about performance artists that begins “Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief”? ... That it’s totally weird, and pretty wonderful. Most of all, that it manages to be brainy without sacrificing heart.” (O, the Oprah Magazine )
” [A] 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.... [a] strange and wonderful novel...that will linger in your mind long after.” (NPR.org )
“Irresistible…This strange novel deserves to be very successful…. Wilson’s trim and intriguing narrative [captures] the selling out of one’s life and children for the sake of notoriety…. I’d love to be able to see Annie’s movies and read Buster’s books, but I’ll settle for being Wilson’s fan instead.” (Time magazine )
“A proud descendant of the Sycamores in Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You....[T]he poignant truth...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.” (Washington Post )
“Wilson’s writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact…Wilson keeps his plot moving swiftly enough to keep readers absorbed. And those sentences are really something.” (Boston Globe )
“This is not another novel about an educated upper-middle-class family wracked with dysfunction beneath the surface. Ma and Pa Fang, Camille and Caleb, are oddballs for all to see.” (New York Post )
“Inventive and hilarious. This is complex psychological ground, and the 32-year-old Mr. Wilson navigates it with a calm experience that his tender age shouldn’t allow.” (Wall Street Journal )
“Great art is difficult, Caleb Fang likes to say, but with this wonder of a first novel, Kevin Wilson makes it look easy.” (Los Angeles Times Magazine )
“[Wilson] has created a memorable shorthand for describing parent-child deceptions and for ways in which creative art and destructive behavior intersect. But he never generalizes.... Whenever this book refers to “a Fang thing,” Mr. Wilson is utterly clear about what that means.” (Janet Maslin, New York Times )
“Wilson’s creative and funny novel examines two young lives in the process of getting skewed, all in the pursuit of art with a capital A.” (The Must List, Entertainment Weekly )
“Wilson, who drew comparisons to Shirley Jackson with his 2009 story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, brilliantly and hilariously explores the “art for art’s sake” argument.” (Fiction Chronicle, New York Times )
“[A] wildly original new novel… bizarre, unique, unerringly comic, breathtakingly wonderful.... It’s the sort of book you love so much you want to compose sonnets in its name….If The Family Fang is any indication, [Wilson’s] got a long and productive career ahead, one we will enjoy immensely.” (Miami Herald )
“Kevin Wilson introduces THE FAMILY FANG, a winningly bizarre clan on the brink.” (Vanity Fair )
“Funny and fast-paced, Kevin Wilson’s debut brims with just-so observations about the anxiety of influence, parental and artistic.” (Financial Times )
“With his debut story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Kevin Wilson demonstrated that he traffics in weirdness. His stories find space between plausibility and absurdity, and their strange plots have an easy pull. Wilson’s enjoyable first novel, The Family Fang, offers similar pleasures…” (Cleveland Plain Dealer )
“Wilson’s wheelhouse is whimsy, and as in his story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, his characters’ quirks are both metaphors for and products of various larger maladies.” (Time Out Chicago )
“Wild.... Kudos for wit and quirky imagination.” (Christian Science Monitor )
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of artfrom Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combustand playfully describes them…The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” (Time Out New York )
“…deliciously odd, delightfully unhinged and surprisingly warm-hearted…this year’s book to read.” (NBCMiami )
“The kids are not all right in this debut novel about a brother and sister poorly navigating the bizarre world of their parents obsessive performance artists who force their children to participate in their kooky pieces.” (Los Angeles Magazine )
“Funny and off-kilter….What could devolve into little more than slapstick becomes, in Wilson’s skilled hands and, let’s face it, somewhat strange imagination, a rich and textured read. He brings us to the brink of absurdity, then turns on a dime and delivers a deeper, darker novel.” (Chicago Tribune )
“Something so calculated, so choreographed, so wickedly comic should feel fake. But oddly enough, as Annie and Buster stagger about in the warped but jaunty confines of The Family Fang... they gradually become so real you want to call them up and give them your therapist’s number.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of artfrom Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combustand playfully describes them…. The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” (Time Out New York )
“[A] big-hearted and endlessly strange look into a family of artists…. With humor and adoration, Wilson... deftly realiz[es] each character’s emotional capacities and motivations....[A] taut and marvelously entertaining book.” (Dallas Morning News )
“The Family Fang is a delicious book by a stunningly nimble writer. It never fails to entertain, but at the same time raises serious questions about art, interpretation, child-rearing, privacy, publicity and leaving home. I can’t wait to read what Kevin Wilson writes next.” (Houston Chronicle )
“The Family Fang [is] at times is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s quirky, R-rated comedy, The Royal Tenanbaums, without losing its arch originality.” (Christian Science Monitor )
“Wilson’s widely praised novel about performance artists gives a whole new meaning to the term dysfunctional family and may just leave you thinking more fondly of your own relatives in time for those summertime family reunions.” (CBSnews.com )
“[B]rilliant…a well-plotted and intriguing story…intricate and funny...Wilson probes art by constructing art.” (Rain Taxi )
“Literary fiction can be so straight-laced and serious that reading The Family Fang feels like sneaking a treat: here is a well-written, intelligent, and involving novel that’s also tremendously fun.” (Ploughshares )
“A highly engaging and imaginative first novel…Wilson has a gift for characterization and dialogue.” (Art in America )
“If I could marry a book, this would be the one.” (Three Guys, One Book Blog )
“Beneath the surface of the fun and fast-paced The Family Fang, Wilson explores self-identity and families in the context of life lived as art… [A] well-crafted novel that examines what happens to a family when the line between art and life is erased.” (Shelf Awareness )
“The comparisons of Wilson to other writers says less about his work than it does about our desire to understand his imagination. In simple terms, he is very funny, generous to all his characters, and the author of books you feel an immediate urge to reread.” (Bookslut )
“The premise of this book is so perfect I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before …a hugely likable book -funny, colorful, and memorable, if not beautiful and strange…I read this book swiftly and compulsively, like sipping thirstily at a fruity cocktail on a hot summer evening.” (BookBrowse.com review )
“The subtlety of the comedy is flawless, channeling the filmmaking of Wes Anderson or Rian Johnson. A fantastic first novel that asks if the kids are alright, finding answers in the most unexpected places.” (Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) )
“[A] bizarre, mirthful debut novel…leavened with humor.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“[FAMILY FANG] allows Wilson to dazzle and amuse us with some very inventive and provocatively imagined performance art.” (BookPage )
“Don’t be surprised if this becomes one of the most discussed novels of the year.” (Booklist )
“In The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson presents a slyly hilarious novel that’s part social satire, part detective story, and part plain good storytelling. More engaging than A Visit from the Goon Squad, this family saga manages to be both hip and sweet at the same time.” (Publishers Weekly )
“I recently read Kevin Wilson’s novel THE FAMILY FANG, which is so strange and original and hysterically funny. It’s about a husband and wife who are performance artists and force their young children to be part of their art project. It’s a book like nothing else.” (Ann Patchett, Time Magazine )
“It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart. Here, finally, is a much needed reminder that astute fiction can still be a total blast.” (Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way )
“Wilson commands the cavalry riding around the vastly important Army of the Loopy... rides slashing from the Implausible to the Plausible, and from there quickly to the Necessary and on to the True. The Family Fang will appear Coenized out of Hollywood but you should catch them here first.” (Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood )
“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.... Wilson is such [a] talent, so rare and beautiful and big.” (Josh Weil, author of The New Valley )
[Kevin Wilson] tells his madcap story with straight-faced aplomb, highlighting the tricky intersection of family life and artistic endeavor. All fiction readers will enjoy this comic/tragic look at domesticity.” (Library Journal )
“Kevin Wilson’s novel, The Family Fang, was one of the most talked about titles at BEA…[The Family Fang has] the whimsy reminiscent of a Wes Anderson flick…Wilson pulls the fuzzy line between art and life very taut…” (Publishers Weekly Fall Preview: Top Ten Literary Fiction )
“The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. Like everything else Kevin Wilson does, I have never seen anything like it before. The best single word description would be genius.” (Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder )
“In his debut novel, Kevin Wilson expertly navigates between pathos and black comedy while negotiating a smart debate about the human cost of sacrificing all for one’s art. Fang has bite but is also incredibly fun.” (Time magazine, Top 10 Fiction Books of 2011 )
“Wilson writes stylishly...but his real skill is...building up a slow-drip mystery....And [this] isn’t the kind of book you [can] set aside....(I’m looking at you, Swamplandia!) It’s the kind of book in which you need to know what happens...It’s not what you think.” (Esquire, 10 Best Books of 2011 )
“First-time novelist Wilson mixes dire humor and melancholy in this satirical portrait of the uniquely dysfunctional Fangshusband-and-wife performance artists Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Busterand offers a scathing critique of how the baby-boom generation maltreated Gen X.” (Booklist Top Ten First Novels of 2011 )
“This book was my favorite for the sheer force of its creativity… powerful, funny and deeply strange. You won’t read anything else like it.” (Ann Patchett's Favorite Books of 2011 on Salon.com )
“A wacky, wonderful debut about a performance artist couple and their long suffering kids.” (People )
“My favourite novel so far this year: Kevin Wilson’s THE FAMILY FANG. Funny, smart, ingenious, moving, altogether great. Just buy it.” (Nick Hornby )
“Wilson writes with the studied quirkiness of George Saunders or filmmaker Wes Anderson, and there’s some genuine warmth beneath all the surface eccentricity.” (Entertainment Weekly )
“What can you say for a novel about performance artists that begins “Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief”? ... That it’s totally weird, and pretty wonderful. Most of all, that it manages to be brainy without sacrificing heart.” (O, the Oprah Magazine )
” [A] 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.... [a] strange and wonderful novel...that will linger in your mind long after.” (NPR.org )
“Irresistible…This strange novel deserves to be very successful…. Wilson’s trim and intriguing narrative [captures] the selling out of one’s life and children for the sake of notoriety…. I’d love to be able to see Annie’s movies and read Buster’s books, but I’ll settle for being Wilson’s fan instead.” (Time magazine )
“A proud descendant of the Sycamores in Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You....[T]he poignant truth...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.” (Washington Post )
“Wilson’s writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact…Wilson keeps his plot moving swiftly enough to keep readers absorbed. And those sentences are really something.” (Boston Globe )
“This is not another novel about an educated upper-middle-class family wracked with dysfunction beneath the surface. Ma and Pa Fang, Camille and Caleb, are oddballs for all to see.” (New York Post )
“Inventive and hilarious. This is complex psychological ground, and the 32-year-old Mr. Wilson navigates it with a calm experience that his tender age shouldn’t allow.” (Wall Street Journal )
“Great art is difficult, Caleb Fang likes to say, but with this wonder of a first novel, Kevin Wilson makes it look easy.” (Los Angeles Times Magazine )
“[Wilson] has created a memorable shorthand for describing parent-child deceptions and for ways in which creative art and destructive behavior intersect. But he never generalizes.... Whenever this book refers to “a Fang thing,” Mr. Wilson is utterly clear about what that means.” (Janet Maslin, New York Times )
“Wilson’s creative and funny novel examines two young lives in the process of getting skewed, all in the pursuit of art with a capital A.” (The Must List, Entertainment Weekly )
“Wilson, who drew comparisons to Shirley Jackson with his 2009 story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, brilliantly and hilariously explores the “art for art’s sake” argument.” (Fiction Chronicle, New York Times )
“[A] wildly original new novel… bizarre, unique, unerringly comic, breathtakingly wonderful.... It’s the sort of book you love so much you want to compose sonnets in its name….If The Family Fang is any indication, [Wilson’s] got a long and productive career ahead, one we will enjoy immensely.” (Miami Herald )
“Kevin Wilson introduces THE FAMILY FANG, a winningly bizarre clan on the brink.” (Vanity Fair )
“Funny and fast-paced, Kevin Wilson’s debut brims with just-so observations about the anxiety of influence, parental and artistic.” (Financial Times )
“With his debut story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Kevin Wilson demonstrated that he traffics in weirdness. His stories find space between plausibility and absurdity, and their strange plots have an easy pull. Wilson’s enjoyable first novel, The Family Fang, offers similar pleasures…” (Cleveland Plain Dealer )
“Wilson’s wheelhouse is whimsy, and as in his story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, his characters’ quirks are both metaphors for and products of various larger maladies.” (Time Out Chicago )
“Wild.... Kudos for wit and quirky imagination.” (Christian Science Monitor )
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of artfrom Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combustand playfully describes them…The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” (Time Out New York )
“…deliciously odd, delightfully unhinged and surprisingly warm-hearted…this year’s book to read.” (NBCMiami )
“The kids are not all right in this debut novel about a brother and sister poorly navigating the bizarre world of their parents obsessive performance artists who force their children to participate in their kooky pieces.” (Los Angeles Magazine )
“Funny and off-kilter….What could devolve into little more than slapstick becomes, in Wilson’s skilled hands and, let’s face it, somewhat strange imagination, a rich and textured read. He brings us to the brink of absurdity, then turns on a dime and delivers a deeper, darker novel.” (Chicago Tribune )
“Something so calculated, so choreographed, so wickedly comic should feel fake. But oddly enough, as Annie and Buster stagger about in the warped but jaunty confines of The Family Fang... they gradually become so real you want to call them up and give them your therapist’s number.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )
“[Wilson’s] imagination shines as he concocts the book’s many detailed pieces of artfrom Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combustand playfully describes them…. The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants it to be.” (Time Out New York )
“[A] big-hearted and endlessly strange look into a family of artists…. With humor and adoration, Wilson... deftly realiz[es] each character’s emotional capacities and motivations....[A] taut and marvelously entertaining book.” (Dallas Morning News )
“The Family Fang is a delicious book by a stunningly nimble writer. It never fails to entertain, but at the same time raises serious questions about art, interpretation, child-rearing, privacy, publicity and leaving home. I can’t wait to read what Kevin Wilson writes next.” (Houston Chronicle )
“The Family Fang [is] at times is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s quirky, R-rated comedy, The Royal Tenanbaums, without losing its arch originality.” (Christian Science Monitor )
“Wilson’s widely praised novel about performance artists gives a whole new meaning to the term dysfunctional family and may just leave you thinking more fondly of your own relatives in time for those summertime family reunions.” (CBSnews.com )
“[B]rilliant…a well-plotted and intriguing story…intricate and funny...Wilson probes art by constructing art.” (Rain Taxi )
“Literary fiction can be so straight-laced and serious that reading The Family Fang feels like sneaking a treat: here is a well-written, intelligent, and involving novel that’s also tremendously fun.” (Ploughshares )
“A highly engaging and imaginative first novel…Wilson has a gift for characterization and dialogue.” (Art in America )
“If I could marry a book, this would be the one.” (Three Guys, One Book Blog )
“Beneath the surface of the fun and fast-paced The Family Fang, Wilson explores self-identity and families in the context of life lived as art… [A] well-crafted novel that examines what happens to a family when the line between art and life is erased.” (Shelf Awareness )
“The comparisons of Wilson to other writers says less about his work than it does about our desire to understand his imagination. In simple terms, he is very funny, generous to all his characters, and the author of books you feel an immediate urge to reread.” (Bookslut )
“The premise of this book is so perfect I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before …a hugely likable book -funny, colorful, and memorable, if not beautiful and strange…I read this book swiftly and compulsively, like sipping thirstily at a fruity cocktail on a hot summer evening.” (BookBrowse.com review )
“The subtlety of the comedy is flawless, channeling the filmmaking of Wes Anderson or Rian Johnson. A fantastic first novel that asks if the kids are alright, finding answers in the most unexpected places.” (Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) )
“[A] bizarre, mirthful debut novel…leavened with humor.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“[FAMILY FANG] allows Wilson to dazzle and amuse us with some very inventive and provocatively imagined performance art.” (BookPage )
“Don’t be surprised if this becomes one of the most discussed novels of the year.” (Booklist )
“In The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson presents a slyly hilarious novel that’s part social satire, part detective story, and part plain good storytelling. More engaging than A Visit from the Goon Squad, this family saga manages to be both hip and sweet at the same time.” (Publishers Weekly )
“I recently read Kevin Wilson’s novel THE FAMILY FANG, which is so strange and original and hysterically funny. It’s about a husband and wife who are performance artists and force their young children to be part of their art project. It’s a book like nothing else.” (Ann Patchett, Time Magazine )
“It’s The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’d call The Family Fang a guilty pleasure, but it’s too damn smart. Here, finally, is a much needed reminder that astute fiction can still be a total blast.” (Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way )
“Wilson commands the cavalry riding around the vastly important Army of the Loopy... rides slashing from the Implausible to the Plausible, and from there quickly to the Necessary and on to the True. The Family Fang will appear Coenized out of Hollywood but you should catch them here first.” (Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood )
“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.... Wilson is such [a] talent, so rare and beautiful and big.” (Josh Weil, author of The New Valley )
[Kevin Wilson] tells his madcap story with straight-faced aplomb, highlighting the tricky intersection of family life and artistic endeavor. All fiction readers will enjoy this comic/tragic look at domesticity.” (Library Journal )
“Kevin Wilson’s novel, The Family Fang, was one of the most talked about titles at BEA…[The Family Fang has] the whimsy reminiscent of a Wes Anderson flick…Wilson pulls the fuzzy line between art and life very taut…” (Publishers Weekly Fall Preview: Top Ten Literary Fiction )
“The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. Like everything else Kevin Wilson does, I have never seen anything like it before. The best single word description would be genius.” (Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder )
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カスタマーレビュー
Amazon.com で最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー (beta)
Amazon.com:
67件のカスタマーレビュー
43 人中、40人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
"A COMEDY, A TRAGEDY, AND A TOUR-DE-FORCE" IN SPADES
2011/8/14
形式:ハードカバー
It's such a pleasure when a book catches you totally by surprise....and you're delighted. I had absolutely no idea what to anticipate when THE FAMILY FANG arrived - the title reminded me of the Muensters. Well, yes, the Fangs are certainly an outre family but the plot is nothing short of inventive, spellbinding, and amazing.
Caleb and Camille Fang are performance or conceptual artists who use their two children, Annie and Buster, otherwise known as Child A and Child B, as integral parts of their pieces (think of Buster donning a sparkly gown and wig to win a beauty contest or throwing himself on the floor of a mall and shoving giant handfuls of jelly beans into his mouth when his mother's coat reveals the sweet bounty she has just shoplifted. Or, consider Annie plucking a guitar string and singing along with Buster in pitiful voices as they sit on the street beside a guitar case with a sign in it reading, "Our dog needs an operation. Please help us save him."
To the senior Fangs their art is everything regardless of the toll it may be taking on their children. But eventually the children do grow up and leave home. Each tries to create a life and career for themselves, but are unable to make it work. Left with one choice - to return to their parents' home, Annie and Buster do just that. It begins again with the elder Fangs trying to create performances using their children. But then, quite suddenly, Caleb and Camille vanish at a roadside rest stop. Has something dire happened to them or this just another work of art?
Kevin Wilson has fashioned a wise, witty, fantastic novel, delving into familial relationships, and how actions or non-actions may affect each generation.
- Gail Cooke
Caleb and Camille Fang are performance or conceptual artists who use their two children, Annie and Buster, otherwise known as Child A and Child B, as integral parts of their pieces (think of Buster donning a sparkly gown and wig to win a beauty contest or throwing himself on the floor of a mall and shoving giant handfuls of jelly beans into his mouth when his mother's coat reveals the sweet bounty she has just shoplifted. Or, consider Annie plucking a guitar string and singing along with Buster in pitiful voices as they sit on the street beside a guitar case with a sign in it reading, "Our dog needs an operation. Please help us save him."
To the senior Fangs their art is everything regardless of the toll it may be taking on their children. But eventually the children do grow up and leave home. Each tries to create a life and career for themselves, but are unable to make it work. Left with one choice - to return to their parents' home, Annie and Buster do just that. It begins again with the elder Fangs trying to create performances using their children. But then, quite suddenly, Caleb and Camille vanish at a roadside rest stop. Has something dire happened to them or this just another work of art?
Kevin Wilson has fashioned a wise, witty, fantastic novel, delving into familial relationships, and how actions or non-actions may affect each generation.
- Gail Cooke
24 人中、23人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
What makes a family?
2011/8/14
形式:ハードカバー|Amazonが確認した購入
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.
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.
22 人中、21人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Tangled Up In Black And Blue
2011/8/13
形式:ハードカバー
It is said there are only two stories in literature: the courage of men and the charm of women. Reverse those roles and you pretty much have the milieu of Kevin Wilson's new novel The Family Fang. Annie Fang, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fang who are about that interesting early on, her pliant paps parading as she marches onto a set design on her way to a topless scene in a B movie, is never more courageous. When brother Buster wins the Little Miss Crimson Clover crown, well, to his mother at least, he's a picture of inveterate graciousness and charm. And later, when the siblings go looking for their missing parents, on page 198 we get: "Annie felt her fingers snap into fists...then she felt Buster's own hand slowly uncurl her fingers until they were straight and steady." Bold courage, quiet charm. Annie also has stout advice for Buster who announces that after getting shot in the face with a potato gun, he's back living with mom and dad. "Get out of there, Buster...you can't stay there...you need to escape," she scolds, and right away we wonder if the kleptomaniac routine Mrs. Fang put on when the book opened doesn't leave room for a more lurid encore later. It does.
And what of family versus art which was all over the pre publicity blurbs? An ethereal issue at best. The story line is stashed away in Annie and Buster's sibling relationship and its fun digging this out because there is enough literary art and gamesmanship to keep English majors (and former English majors) happy. Herman Melville gets prominent play, especially the first line of his white whale tale. George Plimpton, he of the multi-variegated career that included a stint as quarterback for the Detroit Lions which he parlayed into a gig with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of maestro Leonard Bernstein, all the while serving as editor of The Paris Review, puts in an appearance as a reader of an audio book featuring characters all of whom Annie "would like to punch in the mouth."
It should be clear Annie is the star here. Her common sense and straight talk over rides everything, and you will forgive her one lapse: sleeping with an editor for Esquire magazine - it wasn't her fault the guy paraded the room in purple jockey shorts. And she doesn't repeat her mistake with semi/ex/sometime/boyfriend Daniel who wants to take her to Wyoming and work on a film script about Nazi Dinosaurs. So if you lose your way in the plot, or bold jabs at popular culture (Sally Mann, too exploitative) seek her out because she can and will extricate any reader from the novel as culture shock ideology that sometimes gets foisted upon us. She's pretty good company.
And what of family versus art which was all over the pre publicity blurbs? An ethereal issue at best. The story line is stashed away in Annie and Buster's sibling relationship and its fun digging this out because there is enough literary art and gamesmanship to keep English majors (and former English majors) happy. Herman Melville gets prominent play, especially the first line of his white whale tale. George Plimpton, he of the multi-variegated career that included a stint as quarterback for the Detroit Lions which he parlayed into a gig with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of maestro Leonard Bernstein, all the while serving as editor of The Paris Review, puts in an appearance as a reader of an audio book featuring characters all of whom Annie "would like to punch in the mouth."
It should be clear Annie is the star here. Her common sense and straight talk over rides everything, and you will forgive her one lapse: sleeping with an editor for Esquire magazine - it wasn't her fault the guy paraded the room in purple jockey shorts. And she doesn't repeat her mistake with semi/ex/sometime/boyfriend Daniel who wants to take her to Wyoming and work on a film script about Nazi Dinosaurs. So if you lose your way in the plot, or bold jabs at popular culture (Sally Mann, too exploitative) seek her out because she can and will extricate any reader from the novel as culture shock ideology that sometimes gets foisted upon us. She's pretty good company.
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