Book Review

By Derryll White

Wilson, Kevin (2011). The Family Fang.

Conventional lives are the perfect refuge if you are a terrible artist.

This is Kevin Wilson’s first novel. It is crazy, insanely funny, and sad – often at the same time. The easy explanation is that it is a novel about art. That is, what constitutes art, how should it be judged, who decides how major grants are dispersed and blockbuster shows mounted in prestigious venues. But to say just that would be unfair. Kevin Wilson laughs at Hollywood, at the American publishing establishment and a number of other art icons. One should also note here that the novel was optioned by Nicole Kidman and in 2015 turned into a film starring Kidman and Jason Bateman.

When the reader reaches a little deeper ‘The Family Fang’ offers a window into how family is constituted today – mother, father, child A and child B. The Fangs took it as a given that the adult parents must control the events, control the art. However, Annie and Buster (Child A and Child B) have a lot to say about that as they grow older. The reader has to ask what the consequences are of intentionally confusing and betraying a child? It most certainly brings the child to question all the lies he or she has grown up with. And, just like my own experience of real life, in the novel the children start to try and control the parents, whop by this time genius art icons.

Kevin Wilson has created a superb novel, a work of art that pulls the reader past the failures of the known world into a different place. Somehow he empowers the reader to reach out for new experiences, for new life. Personal history is surpassed and one moves into new possibilities of self. I really enjoyed this novel.

****

Excerpts from the book:

IMAGINATION – Annie imagined herself in Japan, shilling caffeinated tapioca pearls, living in a closet-sized apartment, dating a washed up sumo wrestler.

“Annie?” Daniel said again.

Annie imagined herself doing dinner theater in a converted barn, playing Myra Marlowe in A Bad Year for Tomatoes, getting fat on carved roast beef and macaroni and cheese from the buffet during intermission.

ART – He felt the nausea of nonfulfillment, having carried Camille, 10 years his junior, his former student, into possible ruination. He felt certain that he was a failure, every artistic endeavour ending with his own surprise at how little had come from it. Perhaps that was how life worked, the expectation of success after each failure the engine that kept the world turning. Perhaps retrogression was an artistic endeavour in itself. Perhaps he might sink so far that he would find himself, somehow, returned to the surface.

A WRITER – When he had first read one of these stories to Annie, she had been silent and then said, “Do you think you might want to play the guitar instead?” No, he did not. He had found something that he could do. He could create conflict. He could see it through to the end. And when it was over, he was the only one left unharmed. He was, he decided without anyone else telling him, a writer.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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