Geek Love: A Novel by Katherine Dunn Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Geek Love: A Novel
Book Review: Amazing, disgusting, & shocking
Summary: 5 Stars
Geek Love is at its core, a story about love and power. It's family love that keeps the Binewski family together so long. It's love, albeit misguided, that brings the various members of the family (Arty, Ophy, Electra, Oly, and Chick) together. And it's love that blinds nearly the entire family of the craving for power, the need to control and dominate, that would eventually lead to the drama and struggle that makes the story so compelling.
Told from the voice of Oly - the family's albino, hunchback dwarf - Geek Love chronicles the adventures of a carnival family, a family whose entire life is dependent upon the bottom-line created from the sideshow profits. Eventually, a child from the family has to take over from the parents, Crystal Lil and Art, and Arturo the Aquaboy, a child born with flippers instead of hands and feet, is more than up for the task. Arty dominates the story line as he slowly but surely takes over, thriving on the power and control, wanting more and more of each.
The conjoined twins, Ophy and Electra, serve as either half an antagonist, or possibly a full antagonist; I'm not sure which. Chick serves as the family "norm", whose telekinetic abilities are powerful but not outwardly apparent. Oly, who loves Arty and is willing to devote her entire life to him, is the perfect narrator, reliving the moments from beginning to end, ensuring that every detail gets its due.
There are the Arturians, The Bag Man, The Psycho Doctor, the mystical powers, the lobotomies, the bodies in formaldehyde, the mysteriously floating sperm, a baby named Mumpo, the redheads, willing castration, maggots and murder. The book is packed full of unexpected twists and turns, interesting characters, and incredible story-telling.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a story that doesn't follow the cookie-cutter mold. It's interesting from the first page, and it's impossible to put down.
Book Review: An amazing book
Summary: 5 Stars
Truly one of the best, I recommend it to anyone and everyone.Book Review: An amazing success in literature
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow. This has to be one of the best books I have ever read. Never have I been so shocked and riveted as when I read Geek Love. Katherine Dunn has explored the dark, the dirty, the freakish, and the obscene in such a way that makes these qualities seem almost beautiful. Centered around a family of circusfolk who breed children with genetic defects in order to draw crowds, Geek Love will draw you into those parts of this world that you are used to pretending don't exist. This is truly fearless writing; Dunn took a chance and she succeeded. Dunn exemplifies key aspects of human nature in her characters. Most interesting is Arturo, a young boy who is raised as a sideshow oddity like his siblings. Arturo functions as an eye that watches and observes how us humans work. He is in a perfect position to do this, as he is not really a member of "normal" society. His reflections and, ultimately,his actions, shed light on those parts of life that we usually shove out of our minds. This is truly a beautiful novel.Book Review: An oppressive reading experience
Summary: 2 Stars
I found this book oppressive -- there were times when I couldn't bring myself to pick it up, yet I couldn't abandon it. I have had this book for over 10 years and am not sure why I decided to read it now. I am so disappointed. It is not well-organized, the narrative bounces around too much, ALL of the characters are horrible and completely unlikeable. I have a feeling that it will be one of the books I always remember, so I cannot completely deny its power, but I do not think it deserves the praise it has gotten. I would not recommend this book to anyone.Book Review: And I'd figured I'd come to the end of being amazed.
Summary: 5 Stars
"And I'd figured I'd come to the end of being amazed. Run out of it, like you'd run out of sugar. But when I saw you lovely girls I thought to myself, maybe there's more to life yet."
An astonishing, grotesque, sharp-tongued, and lovingly written family memoir and the most entertaining work of fiction I've read in years. Reduced to archetypes, it's the story of a family struggling with its own hubris (a la the Magnificent Ambersons or Royal Tenenbaums) and a meandering reflection on small-town America -- an unsentimental road-trip comedy dotted with soft drawls, murder, prostitution, tigers, telekinesis, a cult of amputees, and lots of security guards. Think Willie Nelson and the Quay brothers collaborating in the milieu of HBO's Carnivale, and you have a rough idea of the premise and aesthetic of the novel.
Though it's thoroughly entertaining, the flaws are stark: at about the two-thirds mark, Dunn steers the storytelling away from a first-person recollection to 'journalist's notes,' a decision which, depending on how you frame it, drags down the pace considerably or is a judicious bit of editing that compresses the formidable challenge of exposition and actually speeds the action. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it's there and it gives Dunn the opportunity to drop in a few smart epigraphs that would otherwise have been non sequiturs. Some characters are painstakingly and hilariously dressed but given few lines; while I hoped that some of them would have more presence in the story arc, I know that if my obituary is to be published, I want Dunn to write it.
Something else to keep in mind as you read this book: a majority of the action happens between characters who are children, at most adolescents, in the 20th century. While in the 21st century, I might no longer look upon carnivals or freaks or even acts of extreme sadism in awe, Geek Love reminded me of the thrill of audacity, and that achievement on its own is amazing to me.