Geek Love: A Novel
by Katherine Dunn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Katherine DunnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-06-11
ISBN: 0375713344
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375713347
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Geek Love: A Novel
Book Review: "Freaks are like owls, mythed into blinking, bloodless objectivity"
Summary: 5 Stars
GEEK LOVE is the story of Binewski's Fabulon, a traveling carnival owned and operated by Al and Lily Binewski. In the early days of the carnival, there isn't a lot of money to pay carnival performers; so Al and Lily decide to breed their own freak show. Lily intentionally uses illegal drugs, insecticides, and even radioisotopes during her pregnancies, and after several failed attempts (which are on display in the carnival's museum, floating in formaldehyde, their deformities revealed in all their grotesque glory), she has four successes: Arturo (aka "The Aqua Boy"), a head and torso with flippers instead of arms and legs; Iphigenia and Electra, beautiful twins who share a common set of legs; Olympia, a bald, hunch-backed albino dwarf; and the youngest, Chick, who looks like a "norm" on the outside but has telekinetic powers that are both opportune and catastrophic for the Binewski family.
Olympia is our narrator, guiding us through the freaky and fantastical world of GEEK LOVE. But it's Oly's brother, Arty, who's really at the center of the story. Arty is power-hungry, malicious, bitter, calculating, jaggedly jealous. He thinks only of self-preservation, and, as a result, he can be undeniably charismatic. He's so magnetic, in fact, that he establishes his own cult. He calls his followers "The Arturans," and he preaches salvation through the sacrifice of body parts. Olympia, for her part, is desperately in love with Arty, and she's content to be his slave, to fulfill his every wish. With Chick's help, she becomes pregnant with Arty's child--a daughter, Miranda, who is completely normal but for a curling little tail. The novel follows two storylines: the one during Oly's childhood and adolescence with the carnival; and a present-day storyline in which Oly lives in the same building as her beautiful daughter, an artist who has no idea that the grotesque hunchback she's so desperate to draw is her mother.
In the pages of GEEK LOVE, nothing is off-limits: You'll meet geeks and freaks, a surgeon who joined the Fabulon after performing abdominal surgery on herself, a 26-pound newborn, hundreds of redheads, "The Bag Man," a reporter-turned-maggot-salesman, an heir to a travel-dinner fortune who has a very interesting way of helping people, and more. GEEK LOVE is at once disgusting and morbidly fascinating, bizarre and relentlessly real, repugnant and engrossing. It'll repel you and entice you, keep you riveted and make you squeamish, break your heart and give you hope, incite within you sympathy and sorrow. There's beauty in the ugliness of it, and ugliness in the beauty of it. There are no happy endings here: just a visceral, relentless look at life on the fringe for those "freaks" we objectify and slink away from in disgust and horror.
The narrative itself is imaginative and seamless; the prose is brutally raw. Dunn's novel asks us to do some soul-searching and face the little freak that lives in all of us, whether or not we're "norms" on the outside. I finished reading GEEK LOVE this morning, and several hours later (at work, no less), I just can't stop thinking about this fascinating book. It shocked me; it hit me like a punch in the gut, and I'm still trying to catch my breath. It's definitely not for everyone, but for me, this book was utterly affecting. Any book that can keep me thinking about it long after I've turned the last page, any novel that can inspire such strong emotions in me and make me think about issues so much bigger than myself, has definitely done its job. I can't give GEEK LOVE a higher recommendation than that.
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