We have all had this moment: someone near us hurdles beyond normal social boundaries, provoking our shock and disbelief and, at some point, fleeting glances to see if there are cameras rolling nearby. The mundane turns into the absurd. Kevin Wilson creates a family that thrives on such situations, that creates such situations in the high name of art. Part family drama and part comedy, The Family Fang is the product of a wicked, creative, and hilarious intellect, yet held together by a surprising amount of warmth.

Caleb and Camille Fang are not merely dedicated to their performance art. It is their religion, and they follow it with the fervor of zealots. Their art, however, falls within no normal bounds; they seek to create "beautiful" and "strange" experiences for people around them, situations of dislocation. We see them plan these scenes down to the smallest details, film them, and then marvel at their own art—or inside jokes.

Naturally, when Caleb and Camille have children they are faced with a dilemma: either shelve the art or somehow incorporate all of it together, children and performance art in one giant circle of oddness. Unsurprisingly, they choose the latter. Annie and Buster Fang become part of their parents' shtick. In one early scene, a loose re-creation of The Sound and the Fury, Annie and Buster bang on musical instruments and sing off-tune in an effort to raise money for their imaginary dog's operation. They sing wickedly ludicrous songs with lyrics such as, "It's a sad world. It's unforgiving. Kill all your parents so you can keep on living." As part of the overall performance, Caleb and Camille begin to heckle and taunt the children, simply to see what the crowd will do. The crowd splits into factions, both for and against the musicians, and chaos ensues. At the end, the family, including Caleb with a fresh black eye, joins hands and repeats the line: "Kill all your parents so you can keep on living."

Herein lies the tension for Annie and Buster. The novel is told through both flashback and present action, so we see the two flailing against the world and their parents from a young age, unsure of their roles with either. Annie grows into a sexually confused and moderately successful actress whose instability lands her on the front pages of the tabloids. Buster becomes a depressed and neurotic writer, struggling with his constant need to escape. They strive to make their way in the world, to create their own realities as easily as they created performance art pieces years ago. And, like many twentysomethings, they simultaneously loathe and love their parents. When separate tragedies force them to return home, they nevertheless hope to finally break free of their parents' maniacal and bizarre art, from their parents' authority and control. In some sense, Wilson's novel is a coming-of-age story for the 21st century. While their parents plan their magnum opus, Annie and Buster face the power of their own choices and the obligation to make their own way in society.

The Family Fang, then, despite an outlandish and hilarious premise, has an underlying warmth bordering on sentimentality. Wilson's raucous tale, even with his playful and sardonic style and his memorable characters (including a professor who wants to get shot for a piece of performance art, or a group of veterans now focused on making the world's strongest potato gun), is ultimately driven by plot and premise. Caleb and Camille are driven artists who have only one dimension. Even Annie and Buster exist on the threshold of cliché: we are all too familiar with unstable movie stars and neurotic writers, and with their conflicting desires to love and leave their parents. Unfortunately, the characters do not move beyond this. Though quirky and memorable, they do not surprise us in ways that make characters real, in the ways that we surprise ourselves.

Yet, the novel is propelled not only by plot but also by ideas. Wilson has created a rich story questioning the role of art and artist, of audience and responsibility. As Caleb and Camille create performances that upset and dislocate their audience, they assert such "art" is beauty itself. Art creates reality for Caleb and Camille; there is no distinction. The more "art" they can create, the more beautiful and surprising reality becomes.

We wonder if such performance art is indeed art. Any great movie or novel does its own reshuffling of reality, and in a sense creates a new reality for the audience. Yet, this is done while the audience essentially knows it is being lied to: we know the movie or novel isn't real. In performance art of Caleb and Camille's sort, members of the audience become actors and participators themselves. Does art imply an audience? In some sense, no artistic work becomes real until it is viewed and digested and internalized; until it is called art. Or, can anyone create an upsetting scene and call it art? What is the role of art in our society: is it to dislocate and surprise us, to connect us with the transcendent, with each other, or any (or all) of the above? Wilson doesn't answer these questions. He merely raises them as we watch Caleb and Camille blur the line between reality and art.

Annie and Buster, however, do not view art in the same way their parents do. Hobart, Caleb's old graduate school professor, confesses to them: "You two are great artists …. You can separate reality from art. A lot of us can't do that." As an actor and a novelist, Annie and Buster are happy to let their audience in on the lie. They still desire to reshape reality through their art, but do so with others in mind. This is the unsettling aspect of Caleb and Camille: as performance artists who never let their audience in on the lie, they become self-serving; their art is the individual aesthetic experience carried as far as it will go, essentially becoming autoeroticism. Annie and Buster resist this parental legacy. Learning to create order out of chaos, they manage to carve out meaning and share it with others.

Gabriel Knipp teaches English at a high school in Denver. He blogs here.