What's on your nightstand

What’s on My Nightstand May 2025

Which book has moved or engaged you? Please share it with other CCW members. We accept all genres. Tell us what the book is about (without giving away any spoilers), your reaction to it and why. Please send book reviews to Barbara.siebeneick@gmail.com. (Please note that all book reviews are the opinion of the writer and not the Central Coast Writers.) This month’s review is from Matt Tracy

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

This is a book about two kids whose parents are performance artists. The parents set up situations that are primed to go out of control and allow the situation to develop. The unsuspecting bystanders who get caught up in the chaos are experiencing “true art” unsullied by preconceptions of what art should be or anyone else’s interpretation of the art.

The parents always felt that children kill art by making the artist afraid to take chances. When their first child showed up unplanned, they were determined not to let that happen to them. So, they integrated their kids, Annie and Buster, (Child A and Child B) into their chaotic situations, often without telling them exactly what was going on.

As adults, both the kids are running into problems in their lives and move home to take a break from their struggles. Shortly thereafter, the parents die in a robbery-murder at a truck stop in North Carolina. Although there are no bodies, the police are convinced they’re dead. There’s blood everywhere in their van. 

Annie and Buster, though, know that this is exactly the type of stunt their parents would pull. They struggle with grief for their dead parents and anger at them for involving them another stunt (is it a stunt or is it real?), this time making them the innocent bystanders. The two adult kids have to lean on each other to deal with their messed-up life situations, their feelings, who they are without their parents, and how they want to express who they are. 

It’s funny and strange and touching and emotionally intelligent all at the same time.

It’s my new favorite book.