The Family Fang - Softcover

Wilson, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447202384 ISBN 13: 9781447202387

Publisher: Picador, 2011

Synopsis

‘This is the kind of novel you fall in love with: tender-hearted, wonder-filled, a world all its own’ Josh Weil, author of New Valley

‘Great art is difficult’ – that’s the motto of the family Fang.

The family consists of Caleb and Camille Fang (the parents), Annie (Child A) and Buster (Child B).

The family Fang create art: performance art, provocations, interventions – call it what you like. And many people certainly don’t call it ‘Art’.

But as Annie and Buster grow up, like all children, they find their parents’ behaviour an embarrassment. They refuse to take up their roles in these outrageous acts. They escape: Annie becomes an actor, a star in the world of indie filmmaking, and Buster pursues gonzo journalism, constantly on the trail of a good story. But when both their lives start to fall apart, there is nowhere left to go but home.

Meanwhile Caleb and Camille have been planning their most ambitious project yet and the children have no choice: like it or not, they will participate in one final performance. The family Fang’s magnum opus will determine what is ultimately more important: their family or their art.

‘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.’ Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto

About this title

Review:

`The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson is a joy . . . The Family Fang keeps to the right side of quirky, and has some insightful commentary on the complexities of family relationships. This manages to be a lot of fun, but also very smart.'
--Bookseller's Choice, The Bookseller

'With shades of The Royal Tenenbaums, the whimsically eccentric Fang family live for performance art with hilarious results. Sure to be made into a Coen brothers' film.' --Asos magazine

'Hilarious, quirky and brilliant. You'll fall in love with the Family Fang.' 5* review & straight in at no.1 in their chart! --Heat

'With shades of The Royal Tenenbaums, the whimsically eccentric Fang family live for performance art with hilarious results. Sure to be made into a Coen brothers' film.' --ASOS magazine

'amiable lightweight fun . . . think Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole or John Kennedy Toole's A Conderancy of Dunces'
--Independent on Sunday

'Wilson has created a memorable shorthand for describing parent-child deceptions and for ways in which creative art and destructive behaviour intersect.' --The Scotsman

'If you think your family are quirky, just wait until you meet the Fang family. A funny, kooky tale about two siblings struggling to cope with their parents.' --Heat

'This is a disturbing and fiendishly funny first novel - a film is inevitable. I can't wait.' --The Times

'Funny and destined to be a cult classic' --Stylist

`Funny and fast-paced, Kevin Wilson's debut brims with just-so observations about the anxiety of influence, parental and artistic. Nicole Kidman has apparently bagged the film rights.' --Financial Times

Book Description:

A unique and very funny novel in which art imitates life and life imitates art, in the most mysterious ways

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1447202384
• ISBN 13: 9781447202387
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320