The Family Fang

“[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 Fangs––husband-and-wife performance artists Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Buster—and 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 art—from Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combust—and 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 art—from Camille’s darkly disturbed paintings to Annie’s film project about children who spontaneously combust—and playfully describes them…. The Family Fang is fun, and nothing other than exactly what Wilson wants