Geek Love: A Novel by Katherine Dunn Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.31 You Save: $7.64 (48%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.20 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Geek Love: A Novel
Book Review: Beastly portrayal of physical deformity & mental oppression
Summary: 5 Stars
It was Douglas E. Winter who said, "Horror is not a genre, it is an emotion." With that bold and all-too-true statement ringing in your ears, I will tell you that "Geek Love" is a horror story. The protagonists are not simply trapped by their physical deformities, but also by their own familial love and the malevolent manipulation from one who is of them.
The majority of the story is told by Olympia Binewski, born into a carnival family of intentional freaks. Al and "Crystal Lil" Binewski set about starting their family with one intention; additions to the carnival's attractions. Lily takes illegal drugs, insecticides, and even radioisotopes in order to purposefully "give their children the gift of making money just by being themselves." In other words, they create a family of horribly deformed children, their own freak show.
Arturo, known as Aqua Boy, is the first of their children to survive. He is a torso with flippers for arms and legs. Second born are the Siamese twins Electra and Iphigenia, two perfect torsos rising up from one set of hips and legs, stunningly beautiful despite their deformity. Olympia herself is the third living child, a hunchback albino dwarf, she is considered to be too commonplace to be useful but is kept anyway. The youngest child, Fortunato, called Chick, was almost left on a doorstep for being normal when his telekinetic powers were discovered. Kept in what was called "The Chute", in glass display jars, were the children of Al and Lily that did not live, yet kept as attractions in the Binewski Fabulon Carnival.
Dunn's tale of quiet, creeping horror takes place in two separate time frames, Olympia's childhood with the carnival and a present day encounter with the daughter who doesn't know her. The "present-day" storyline is a bit weak, stilted and practically unfeeling in its telling, but Olympia's childhood with the Fabulon is wrought with deeply impacting emotions of fear, hate, bitterness, happiness...and love.
From the quietly acquiescing Olympia to the independence of the twins to the narcissistic brutality of Arturo, and the gentle genius of Chick, you love and hate the Binewski's as you find yourself completely engulfed in their strange world. Arturo performs in a fish tank, and the twins take piano and singing lessons to entertain the crowds, while Olympia basically becomes a slave to her brother Arturo.
But Arturo is not satisfied simply swimming in a tank, and with the help of an underwater sound device and his very own gift of speech, begins to mesmerize the crowds and forms a cult around himself. A deadly cult of self-mutilation and butchery that called themselves Arturans rises up to follow the Aqua Boy, including a questionable physician called Dr. Phyllis, who joined the carnival after performing abdominal surgery on herself in her dorm room.
You will meet Horst, the cat man and his tigers; Zephir McGurk, who tries to sell Arturo a strange device and winds out joining the Arturans; Norval Sanderson, a reporter who exposes Arturo's cult and then joins the carnival to sell maggots; Vern Bogner, a madman who eventually becomes "The Bag Man"; and the numerous Redheads who tends the carnival's food and game stands.
From languid childhood afternoons to horrifying parking lot murderers, from close-knit family story times to vicious sibling rivalry, Geek Love is anything but dull or boring. Innocence at the beginning, trepidation in the middle, heartbreak at the end, all stirred in with the tendrils of horror that creep from the pages and bite unexpectedly, Dunn has managed to puncture my mind and my flesh with this expertly crafted story.
Powerful, heartbreaking, maddening, frustrating, sickening, fascinating, repugnant and yet alluring, Geek Love is a tightly written masterpiece of finding beauty in sewers, and putrescence in that which glitters. Any book that stirs my love/hate passions as deeply as Geek Love deserves to receive my highest recommendation. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Enjoy!
Book Review: Better than most.
Summary: 5 Stars
And most of all INTERESTING. Following a moderately slow buildup, this book is a freight train as the rising action ends. Gorgeous writing, vivid and original. It trumps it's premise, which is fantastic. How many books live up to their promise? K. Dunn's on par with Rushdie and Gabriel Marquez. An important American Writer.Book Review: Bizarre but...
Summary: 4 Stars
Well, this was indeed a strange book. One should find themselves despising parents who purposely take drugs to breed their own freak show. For that matter, saving lost pregnancies and corpses in jars that are polished regularly SHOULD be a despicable act. And yet, I took a lesson from this book; love comes in many many forms. Sometimes it's not pretty and we don't have to agree with it but it is a driving force.
(By the way, check out my book on Kindle! The View From the Dashboard)
Book Review: Bought for college class
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the sixth book we will read for a college seminar I'm taking. Even though the class won't begin reading this until the last couple weeks of the semester, I have already begun reading it. The day I picked it up from the post office, I opened the cover and began casually reading the first couple pages. I have yet to be able to put it down until May. The subject matter is as revolting as it is irresistible -- I can't stop reading this. Excellent buy.Book Review: Brilliantly heartbreaking
Summary: 5 Stars
In the spirit of lower-caste Indians who cripple their children, guaranteeing them carreers in begging, the Binewski family engineers their children for unique birth-defects, providing them a life as carnival freaks.
The history (and eventual downfall) of the family is interwoven with a woman's quest to protect the daughter who she had to give up as a child.
The characters are complex, flawed and deeply human.
This story is at once frightening, heart-breaking, funny and inspiring.