The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

January 10, 2023

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Camille and Caleb Fang are performance artists who present their interpretations of literary classics. They drag their two children, Annie and Buster, along to assist them. Their goal is to disrupt a normal situation, such as a wedding, a visit to a fast food restaurant, or a school play. Fast forward 20 years and Annie is an actor while Buster is a freelance journalist struggling to write his third novel. As adults, both Annie and Buster make bad decisions: Buster takes an assignment to interview a group of army veterans who have modified army weapons to make a potato cannon and agrees to let them shoot a potato off his head, while Annie's career goes up in flames after she agrees to do a topless scene in a movie but takes things too far by wandering around the set topless while the crew takes pictures of her and then getting involved with another female actor. They both return to the family home to find their parents missing. The police think something really happened to the Fang parents, while Annie and Buster are convinced it's just another performance stunt. Guess who's right?

Not as good as Wilson's other novels, especially Nothing to See Here. The Fang family are quirky and have an unusual world view. The adult Annie and Buster make a lot of decisions/choices that seem like a good idea at the time. Or maybe not, considering their parents' careers. The phrase that forms the basis of Wilson's novel Now is Not the Time to Panic originates in this book. In the movie version, Buster's name was changed to Baxter.

An example of performance art - sometimes nothing happens, while at other times, the audience is involved

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

November 2, 2022

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Two misfit kids, Frankie and Zeke, are 16 and living in the small town of Coalfield. Their families are falling apart, since both fathers ran off with other women. It's summer, they're bored, so they decide to spend their summer break making art. They design a poster with a variety of images and a couple of nonsense sentences, make hundreds of copies, and hang up the posters all over town, just to see what kind of reaction they get. Everyone in town has an opinion, from cults to heavy metal bands. Then the poster spreads beyond their town, like it's taken on a life of its own. Twenty years later, a journalists unearths the truth about the poster and advises Frankie that she is planning to publish an article.

I read and enjoyed the author's previous book Nothing to See Here. I live in Chicago and I've seen similar art installations, hundreds of copies of a poster stapled to the wooden barrier around a construction site or on boarded up store windows, and wondered about the artist's intentions. The story is sweet without being cloying, and it starts out with a YA feeling but quickly evolves into so much more. The two main characters are so young, so lovingly created and so stunned at the consequences of what was basically the way to pass the summer months. Frankie's mom and brothers are wonderful characters, too. The ending was a little disappointing since the reader doesn't get to find out what happens when the article is published, but we know that Frankie and Zeke are all right. Be sure to read the author's note at the beginning about his inspiration for the story.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

October 30, 2019

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Okay, so, how often do you find a book that deals with spontaneous human combustion?  With humor, compassion, and love?  I’d say just about never, until now.

Lillian Breaker is working a dead-end job in her home town, when she gets a frantic letter from her former roommate pleading for her help.  Lillian’s dreams of a better life for herself were cut short when her roomie Madison got caught with drugs at their exclusive high school, and Madison’s father paid off Lillian’s mother to get Lillian to take the rap for Madison.  Lillian was expelled and her mother spent the money on cigarettes, booze, and partying.

Fifteen years later, Madison Billings Roberts is married to a much older man, a U.S. senator, and they live on a palatial estate with their son Timothy.  But Senator Roberts has two children from his first marriage, Roland and Bessie, who (to say the least) have special needs:  if they get upset, they spontaneously burst into flames.  And these are two angry kids.  Madison and the senator need a nanny to look after the children in a special guest house on the estate, away from the main house since there is no predicting when these incidents might occur.  What if there were witnesses!  Imagine the negative publicity!  What if they burn the house down!  Think of what would happen to the Roberts’ perfect image!  The senator’s career would be down the tubes!

Lillian is the only person that Madison trusts enough with her secret.  The salary that Madison is offering is really good, too, so Lillian takes on the job of looking after the two near-feral children.  Their mother was paranoid, so the twins were home-schooled and rarely left the house.  Since the mother’s death, they’ve been living with their maternal grandparents who are being paid to “look after” the kids (and they have a really loose interpretation of “look after”).  The first time she meets the twins, despite coming away bleeding and half-drowned, Lillian unexpectedly connects with them and she resolves to try to make their lives better and help them learn to deal with and control their affliction. 

Lillian herself is damaged, since she had a neglected childhood without a father, and a mother who brought home boyfriend after boyfriend; after the drug incident, Lillian’s life spontaneously combusted.  She appears to be the first person who ever really takes an interest in the twins, even if she is being paid to look after them.

There are themes of friendship, forgiveness, disability, family, loss, and unexpected love.  And yet it is an uplifting feel-good book.  You can substitute any disability for “spontaneous human combustion” and the reaction of adults would be the same:  embarrassment, shame, “what will people think,” “this didn’t come from my side of the family,” focusing on the disability rather than the kids’ happiness.  The children’s propensity to burst into flames is a metaphor for all of the havoc of raising children:  the teenager who has a tantrum in public, the pre-schooler who gets mad at his parents and knocks all the booze bottles off the sideboard at a party, the adolescent who wants to be a super-hero and decides to jump off the school roof.  Spontaneous human combustion in the novel is just an exaggerated form of acting-out.

This is a very enjoyable read and is sure to appeal to anyone who likes quirky characters and unusual situations, and it has great cover art.  

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.