Well, I was keeping up with book posts pretty well. I was only one book behind with my last post and now -- on the doorstep of October -- have to go back to a book I read in August! Oh well!
This next book was a pretty easy selection. I had heard good things about Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang and a good part of the buzz was that it was pretty quirky -- which is usually right up my alley, and it did not disappoint in that respect as it had quirkiness in spades!
First off, no worries The Fangs are NOT vampires -- I'm guessing the title alone may keep throngs of folks away -- but a family of performance artists who pull off these crazy public stunts in the name of "art." While the entire family of four participate, it is really just the parents, Caleb and Camille, who are driving the action with their children merely used as props, so much so they often refer to them as "Child A" and "Child B " with "real" corresponding names of Annie and Buster.
While this all sounds terribly outrageous (and it is!), this is a novel of dark humor and satire. Much of the novel splits itself between the present -- where Annie and Buster are semi-successful, but struggling adults -- and the past, where readers re-live some of the Fangs' "greatest hits" which help explain much of the shaky foundation and general messed-up-ness (how's that for a word!) of the present.
Much of the magic of this novel is in these vignettes from the past. Wilson creates these delightfully uncomfortable, squirm-inducing, jaw-dropping acts of this brand of public performance art. Given that readers know the Fangs are very much alive and well (and not incarcerated) in the present day, we know that they "survive" each of these acts, but there is still this wonderful tension with each one.
The "buuuuut" problem lies in that the present-day storyline(s) as they pale in comparison. Perhaps this in intentional on Wilson's part as it is an exploration of this scorched-earth aftermath of cumulative years of family dysfunction. The stories from the past had momentum and energy which built to a bang, but overall I found novel ending with the proverbial whimper. Again, I suspect this may have been the point, but it was still a bit of a let-down/feel flat for me.
Nevertheless, still quite good, highly original and a non-hesitant recommendation for fellow fans of quirk. I gave the book 3.5 stars, but rounded it down to 3 on Goodreads just for the inconsistency between the past/present story-lines and the ending (and because I just felt I had been rating books too highly of late!).
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