Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a debut novelist who loves a good family drama. I’m a fiction professor at the University of Memphis, where I teach a course on the dysfunctional family novel featuring books on this list. I’m also an atheist, a bisexual, and a father to a one-year-old—all of which influenced my book. In addition to the novel, I’ve written a story collection called Quantum Convention. My stories have aired on Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts and appeared in American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, and Electric Literature, among other journals. I also have a new essay up at Lit Hub about channeling my bisexuality through queer characters.
Eric's book list on dysfunctional family novels about mythmaking
Why did Eric love this book?
Wilson’s novels often interrogate art and morality in a hilarious fashion.
In this book, siblings Annie and Buster struggle to overcome their childhood personas of Child A and Child B in their parents’ performance art pieces. When Caleb and Camille disappear under mysterious circumstances, Annie and Buster must investigate to find out if their parents are really dead or if this is yet another elaborate scheme in the name of art.
What is real? What is artifice? Can they escape the myth of their parents’ making and find a healthier way to make their own art?
1 author picked The Family Fang as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Mr and Mrs Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist's work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parent’s strange world.
When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and…