The Family Fang

The Family Fang (2011) by Kevin Wilson. Creative, original, funny and tragic -- these are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind after reading this book. It's about the Fang family -- Caleb and Camille, the parents, and Annie and Buster, the kids. As a group, they are performance artists, although Annie and Buster are just doing it to appease their parents. They like to stage happenings at malls, where there are large numbers of gullible strangers that they can dupe. They arrange little dramas, where they pretend not to know one another but act in concert to create as much chaos as possible. And they make sure that someone, usually Annie or Buster, is on hand with a camera to film the action. If you're wondering how Fang is pronounced, I'm pretty sure it's fang, as opposed to fong. They are not Asian. I greatly enjoyed this book, and it ends in perhaps the only way it can. Not necessarily a happy ending, but a satisfying one. Grade: A-