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Caninos Em Família (2014)

by Kevin Wilson(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Companhia das Letras

review 1: I really loved this book a lot more than I expected to. It's all about identity and art and creativity and family and the chaos and ambiguity and comedy and tragedy that are a part of all of those things. It's funny and bittersweet and heart-breaking and hopeful all at the same time, which is a pretty neat trick to pull off. Buster and Annie are characters I wanted to spend more time with, not because they are perfect, but because they felt so human in the bad choices and confusion they find themselves facing. The novel's structure, alternating between the "present" and gallery-like explanations of the Fangs' prior performance art pieces strikes just the right tone. I'm excited to see what Wilson writes next.
review 2: In short: here’s a novel which, as it wa... mores expressly written, did not hold much value. It’s value may however be seen as a type of totem of the age of declining adulthood that we see so much today.What was the main conflict of this book?What you have here is the quintessential archetype of American Fiction on display: missing parents. This book felt less like a Wes Anderson model of family dysfunction than of a remix of an Encyclopedia Brown tale. I found the theme of the book to be elusive, but perhaps amounting to good art should challenge you. Which I’m not necessarily non-sympathetic to, but I found it odd that such a message should be conveyed via not only a redolent archetype but what was more often than not pedestrian prose. Certain passages of dialogue felt right from the can in how they linearly sketched the circumstances of the action at hand and not much more. I understand that not everything need be form-follow-function, or how “does the form meet the content”, but I would have liked to have seen displayed some mechanics of the very art that this book holds at its center.Let’s talk about the Fang Family and their plots to disrupt the figurative and metaphorical commerce of everyday life through their art. What is being gained here? Is their attack on the mall an attack on consumerism? Or are these disruptions for their own sake? The Romeo and Juliet plot was to be an attack on the notion of gender roles--but even if it was successful in that goal it is still a one note joke amounting to “isn’t it confusing that shakespeare didn’t write it this way”? Am I thinking about these vignettes too much at the expense of the “caper” story i.e. the main story? I don’t know where my attention should be. Just like I don’t know where I am on these parents who at times resembled child abusers more than artists. Annie seems to be the child who recognizes the exploitation at the hands of the parents and yet still the affection. Also, and I had this feeling to a lesser degree with The Goldfinch, I’m tired of alcohol being used a shortcut to pathos.OK some nitpicky items:-The fact that every major mainstream publication and every art-specific periodical wrote features on the Fangs in the run up to their show at literally the last gallery that would have them is a little give-me-a-break-There is no way in 2011 you can name a character Buster and not immediately force the reader to recall Arrested Development. Especially when the character literally quotes from the show on page 68 (“I’m a monster!”)-What was with paragraph spacing in this book? Sequences of dire less

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