Somewhere between those happy families that Tolstoy felt were all alike and the unhappy families he claimed were unhappy in their own ways lie the quirky families we all love. Whether we grew up in Mayberry R.F.D. or the Bates Motel, most of us were raised on quirky families, from “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” to “The Addams Family,” which lead us in adulthood to the pleasures of “Cold Comfort Farm” and the warm glow of “Little Miss Sunshine.” With their eccentric relatives always up to crazy shenanigans, this vast fictional genealogy reflects our conflicted embarrassment and affection for the people who raised us.

Kevin Wilson’s first novel, “The Family Fang,” sounds like a proud descendant of the Sycamores in Kaufman and Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You.” It’s a delightfully odd story about the adult children of a pair of avant-garde performance artists. Since leaving home, Annie and Buster Fang have done everything they can to avoid their parents’ outlandish behavior, but self-destructive wackiness seems to run in their genes.