A LOT OF the fiction I have been reading lately tilts grim--Yuyin Li, Hari Kunzru, Bolaño's 2666 (which I am in the middle of)--so I decided I needed to explore the comical as well. Kevin Wilson's novel was a good place to start.
Caleb and Camille Fang are conceptual artists who make a point of including their children, Annie and Buster ("Child A" and "Child B," as they are identified in the documentation) in their events/performances, which are typically disruptive and designed to elicit strong reactions. Roughly every other chapter is a vignette of one or another of these events, which seem rich in possibility for lingering trauma (e.g., Buster, cross-dressed, is entered in a girls' beauty pageant).
In the alternating chapters, set in the novel's present, we see Annie and Buster as adults. They have had some conspicuous success (Buster's first book of stories was a critical success, Annie got noticed for a lead part in an indie film) that has gone sour (Buster's second book gets terrible reviews, Annie gets consumed by Hollywood machinery). As the novel opens, both Fang offspring are at a nadir. On a freelance journalism assignment in Nebraska (!), Buster gets horribly injured by a potato gun (!); Annie has a Britney/Miley/Lindsay style celebrity meltdown and becomes tabloid/internet gossip fodder. With the greatest reluctance, they decide it is time to go back home for a while.
Caleb and Camille seem delighted to have them back. Then they disappear.
Victims of foul play? Of an accident? Or is it another art event?
Answering those questions (which do get answered) not only involves Annie and Buster in a series of travels and encounters, but also requires them to reckon with what it meant and means to be a Fang. Caleb and Camille imposed the weirdest, most unsettling of childhoods on Annie and Buster, but also perhaps empowered them in a unique way.
The Family Fang is brilliantly funny, but also edgy, and ultimately and somewhat surprisingly poignant without getting sentimental.
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