Warning: this review contains spoilers. Read or donÂ’t read it accordingly.

I had a schizophrenic reaction to this book. On the one hand, it had a more profound impact on me than books—even some truly great ones—usually do. On the other hand, I thought it was sloppily edited, and Dunn’s prose ran the spectrum from sublime to clunky and ridiculous.

The good:

Geek Love has a handful of the most memorable characters you’ll ever find. Arturo the Aqua Boy is deftly handled, a megalomaniacal little turd whose true gift is not his freakish nature, but his incredible powers of manipulation. His slow seizure of power behind the scenes at the Binewski Fabulon and his exploitation of his after the inception of the Aruturan amputation cult are handled perfectly. Elly and Iphy, the Siamese twins, are also done well, especially after they blossom into sexual maturity. Dunn could have easily fell into trite cliché when she has the two conjoined girls bicker and fight, but their personalities are rich enough that it’s never an issue. Throw in lesser characters the Bag Man and Dr. P, both of whom are hard to stomach for different reasons, and you have a virtuoso ensemble cast.

I also admire the way the readerÂ’s ideas about Al and Crystal Lil as parents changes slowly. Aside from dosing his willing wife with bizarre drug cocktails in order to sire a brood of freaks to populate his carnival, Al seems a model father at the beginning of the book, but our view of him changes as the book progresses.

The story of the Binewski children and the fiery demise of everything they know is mind-blowing. To quote the blurb on the back cover, this book “throws its sulfurous light” on the notion of what’s normal and what’s freakish, not just in terms of outward appearance, but in our heads as well. To say that Geek Love is often unsettling is a rank understatement, but the book holds its dark thrall not by describing the physical deformities embodied by the characters, but by forcing that unflinching view inward. In that regard, Geek Love, feels epic and important.

The Bad:

Dunn needs an editor with a big red pen and the balls to call her on the carpet when her writing gets way to precious. She has a real tendency to over-write. Often, she makes a nifty turn of phrase, only to bury it with another paragraph of useless description and clunky metaphor. While the overall effect of the novel is pretty marvelous, on the sentence level, Dunn is sometimes a hack.

I was also disappointed in the way ChickÂ’s inferno was described. Dunn doesnÂ’t think twice about spending four or five pages describing, say, the horse Arty has lopped off at the knees. SheÂ’ll write an entire paragraph about Miss Lick cooking popcorn or Chick cleaning ArtyÂ’s tank. But the climax of the novel gets barely a page and leaves readers scratching their heads.

A bigger editing problem is the whole frame story of the now-adult Oly and her quest to save her secret daughterÂ’s (literal) tail. The whole Miss Lick saga adds nothing to the book and drags it down. It seems added on in an attempt to make the book seem more sophisticated, what with the chronological shifts and simultaneous story-telling. The novel would have been much tighter and stronger had it focused on the story of the Fabulon.

The Bottom Line:

This is a book that flirts with being truly great, but only ends up being pretty damn good.
382 s Will Byrnes1,329 121k

They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born. Geek Love is an amazing book, audacious, moving, beautiful, substantive, creepy, upsetting, tragic and dark.

So you think of yourself as different, an outsider, a freak in one way or another? Well, maybe you are, but your differences would ly fade were you to compare yourself to most of the characters in this best-selling novel from Katherine Dunn, so best-selling in fact that it has never been out of print. And, in addition to being a popular success, it was a critical one as well, earning a spot as a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award.

A word of warning (several, actually) for those who are familiar only with the contemporary meaning of the word “geek.” Before the word had its DNA mutated to mean “an expert,” particularly of the techie variety, before serious people proclaimed that the geeks will inherit the earth, the word referred specifically to carnival performers who engaged in the very un-nerdy practice of biting the heads off live chickens for paying audiences. Let's see a show of hands. How many of you folks out there, how many nerds in particular, would be interested in returning to etymological roots and getting your McNuggets started the old-fashioned way? Not many. But you, in the back, with your hand up? Do me a favor please and read some other review. Thanks. Of course this was not a problem for Crystal Lil. Somehow it did not freak her husband out that she got off on using her teeth to remove small heads from quivering bodies. “When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” Binewski’s Carnival Fabulon travels the Podunk USA circuit, offering pedestrian locals a peek at the extraordinary. The Binewski family will remind no one of Ozzie and Harriet. More the Addams family, sans the smirks. In fact, they may be the ones who put the nuclear in nuclear family. Frustrated by the frequent loss of carnival performers, Aloysius Binewski and his wife, Lilian Hinchcliff Binewski , (the Crystal Lil of the geek mention above) opt to craft their own, applying measured doses of sundry illegal substances, poisons, and radioisotopes to ensure that their progeny emerge special. The efforts that do not make it through to live birth, or who meet an unhappy end soon after their emergence, are displayed publicly in large glass jars. The survivors include Siamese twins, Iphigenia (Iphy) and Elektra (Elly), Arturo (Arty), the malevolent and megalomaniacal AquaBoy, Fortunato (Chick), who manifests telekinetic power, and Olympia (Oly), our narrator through this family saga. Oly relates the tale of the family to us as an adult. She makes a living as radio personality Hopalong McGurk, which is a good venue if you are a bald, albino dwarf with pink eyes, a sweet voice and a hump.



Reading this book you will forget the boy who lived under the stairs and latch on to the girl who lived under the sink. Oly’s needs are few, but a connection to family is chief among them. She is our insider, observing and reporting the goings on that seem normal to her, but maybe not so much to us. What is normal, anyway? To you and me, norms for the most part, average height, weight, a typical number of standard-issue limbs, no particular magical powers, we stroll the not very broad midway of the straight and narrow. But to Olympia Binewski, having a brother with flipper-shaped limbs, twins sharing one pair of legs, among sundry other parts, and a brother who can move matter with his mind, and a sense of place defined by the nearest road sign defines normal. I was full-grown before I even set foot in a house without wheels. Of course I had been in stores, offices, fuel stations, barns, and warehouses. But I had never walked through the door of a place where people slept and ate and bathed and picked their noses, and, as the saying goes,”lived,” unless that place was three times longer than it was wide and came equipped with road shocks and tires.

When I first stood in such a house I was struck by its terrible solidity. The thing had concrete tentacles sunk into the earth, and a sprawling inefficiency. Everything was bigger than it needed to be and there were so many shadowed, dusty corners empty and wasted that I thought I would get lost if I stepped away from the door. That building wasnÂ’t going anywhere despite an itchy sense that it was not entirely comfortable where it was. Sometimes that family connection can be problematic. Oly is in love with her brother, Arty. AquaBoy is exceptionally bright and tuned in to what works on audiences. He expands his performance from a display of his unusual form to an interaction, as he finds success answering audience questions. He builds this into a very big deal For a while, he answered only generic questions distilled from the scrawled bewilderments and griefs that piled up on the three-by-five cards. Then he stopped answering at all and just told them what he wanted them to hear. Testifying he called it. And a cult is born, Arturism, in which the Admitted, seeking to find the peace that Arty has persuaded them he possesses, allow their bodies to be whittled a piece at a time.

Chick was thought to have been a dreaded norm when he arrived. Al and Lily decided that, as he was of no value to the show, the proper course was to leave him at a gas station. Turns out he has a special gift which manifests in the nick of time. He is absorbed into the family, and put to profitable use as soon as he is able to understand commands.

We follow the family as the children grow, and as will happen, sexuality swells the narrative mix. Complications ensue.

These are not exactly the nicest people, but Dunn offers nuanced portrayals of most of them. We never really find out why Boston Brahmin Lily chooses the low road, but we do see both the dark and the light sides of their children. Or in the case of Arty, the bright side illuminating his dark side. Oly is a sympathetic character and you will have little trouble appreciating her concerns, particularly when she is an adult. Her role, though, is primarily as an observer. Chick is a wounded animal, who, despite his prodigious power, suffers as he feels the pain all around him. The twins have the same problems other twins experience, on steroids. There are a few outsiders who join the Fabulon, and offer a perspective other than OlyÂ’s.

The narrative follows two time lines. The bulk is following the traveling Binewkis over a decade or so. The smaller narrative is Oly as an adult, living in a boarding house in which her mother and her daughter, Miranda, (a Tempest reference if ever there was one, resonant with the opening epigraph, taken from that play), reside. In that stream Mary Malley Lick is a wealthy heiress who professes a desire to liberate young women from the burden of being attractive so they can make their way in the world on their merits. Of course, the very large and not very attractive Ms Lick may be using her great wealth to take beauty away from those who have it, in a form of one-percenter jealousy. Oly takes an interest in her when Lick targets Miranda.

The tales of love, greed, power, envy, powerlessness and rage seem the stuff of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, particularly those centering around Arty. Hubris, abuse of power, fate and comeuppance are most definitely on display. There are really two primary preoccupations of mine involved in this book. One of course is this concept of the cult, and the how-come of that. And the other was the long debate of nature vs. nurture. So those two things linked and seemed to be in an odd way part and parcel of each other, I guess. We are asked to look at questions about the definition of normalcy. Most of the time in literature the freaks want to be everyone else. Here the norms seem to pine for freakishness. Dunn offers a fascinating comparison between the oddness of the Arturists and what society considers appropriate. It’s interesting that when these individuals choose—and it is their choice always—to endure voluntary amputation for their own personal benefit, society professes itself shocked and disapproving. Yet this same society respects the concept that any individual should risk total annihilation in war, subject to the judgment of any superior officer at all and for purposes ranging from a promotion for the lieutenant to higher profits for the bullet company. Hell, they don’t just respect that idea, they flat expect it. And they’ll shoot your ass if you don‘t go along with it. At what point does cultishness, do the needs of the pack, become the norm?

In addition to the startling tale of the Binewskis, Dunn demonstrates a particularly powerful and poetic command of language. Here is a small sample: The sky above Molalla was aching blue but I walked from Arty’s tent to our van in the same air I’d sucked all my life. It was a Binewski blend of lube, grease, dust, popcorn, and hot sugar. We made that air and we carried it with us. The Fabulon’s light was the same in Arkansas as in Idaho—the patented electric dance step of the Binewskis. We made it. the mucoid nubbin that spins a shell called “oyster,” we Binewskis wove a midway shelter called “carnival.” There is plenty more where that came from. There is also serious structural craft on display, as Dunn, in this modern fable, wields parallelism deftly, particularly as applied to how people are formed and changed, and the diverse motivations, self and external, involved in the formation of who we are and what we are capable of, for good and ill. There is a particularly poignant look at innocence in childhood vs adulthood.

Appropriately for a book that concerns freakishness, Geek Love is notable for its packaging. Quick, name five books that are renowned for their covers. Right. Dead air, thatÂ’s what I thought. Ok, Ok, Gatsby, and we all have personal favorites, but how many are really different, and universally regarded as groundbreaking? The Knopf wolfhound on the bound edge of the original hard-cover printing somehow sports five instead of the usual four limbs. And the letters used in the cover title are all mutations. It was considered pretty daring cover art for the time.



One of the inspirations for the story took place in Portland, Oregon. The International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park is home to a wide variety of rose variations. Dunn wondered how it might play out if people were applying genetic control to making people, not in some sort of Aryan quest for perfection, but in trying to design for different. She was also inspired, if the word can be used here, by the awfulness of Jim Jones, and puts some of JonesÂ’s words into ArtyÂ’s mouth. Dunn is from Kansas, originally, but her family moved around a fair bit when she was a kid. She has lived in several European countries, having her son in Ireland, but lives in Portland now, where she has become a renowned writer on boxing.

As for film plans for Geek Love, rights have been sold and sold again, but now reside permanently with Warner Brothers, who may or may not ever get around to producing it.

Geek Love has been continuously in print since itsÂ’ 1989 release. In fact she earned more money from it in the last year than she ever had before. The author was given a contract for a second novel, for a sum well into six figures. But the book has yet to appear. Perhaps it is in a glass jar somewhere.

You donÂ’t have to be a teenager or twenty-something to appreciate the pull of Geek Love. It is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, and I am well on my way to geezerhood. Reading Geek Love may not alter your DNA, give you unusual physical characteristics or make sleeping under the kitchen sink seem appealing. But it will definitely alter your view of what is possible in literature, will make you think about some core subjects in ways that might not have occurred before and will make you perk up whenever you spot one or more of the many references to it that pop up in our culture from time to time, a travelling carnival. It may be too out there for some readers, but I suggest that if it feels that way to you, take an excursion and go out there to see this amazing show. It is one of the best freakinÂ’ books ever.

Review first posted – 12/5/14

Publication date – 1989


=============================EXTRA STUFF

DunnÂ’s FB page is maintained by Knopf not by Dunn

There are many clips on Youtube to the 1932 movie Freaks. When a character in GL is proclaimed One of Us it is a reference to the film

The A.V. Club interview – Dunn quotes are taken from here

Litreactor.com piece on Dunn, with a bit of interview - What The Hell Ever Happened To... Katherine Dunn? – by Joshua Chaplinsky

An excellent piece in Wired.Com - Geek Love at 25: How a Freak Family Inspired Your Pop Culture Heroes

A reading group guide from the Book Report Networkall-time-favorites-fiction literary-fiction334 s Mario the lone bookwolf805 4,825

The circus of life can be a terrifying horror freakshow too

This on one of the greatest, weirdest, and definitively not for the faint of hearth novels with so many passages I still remember years after reading it, which is always a very good sign that the stuff was good and of high quality, just as the stuff the father in the novel is feeding his wife to breed mutants to get more visitors for his freakshow. A first-person narrator leads through a world of child abuse by creating freaks and mutations by giving anything harmful to the pregnant mother, escalating to self-amputation and a mad sect.


Sophisticated slasher fun
I would put it in a line with similar literature one-hit wonders, a work so full of innuendos, dark humor, and shocking passages that it should take its place in modern world literature. But it may still take time until full-aged readers can enjoy works that, because both the explicitness and the philosophical sharpness on society in the monologues are not easy to digest and for many, it will be simply too sad and bloody. So if you can´t handle blood, perversion, and sick deviancy, stay away from this book. All others (is it right to say that in this context?) should have much fun.

Torsoing to Elysium
Quite a drastic allegory to faith, self flagellation, and escalating absolution methods, one of the main plotlines is freaking hardcore. I wonder how many readers will be disgusted by this and stop readingÂ… Although the idea of manifesting the willingness to sacrifice in such a form is maybe one of the best medicines to cure extremists and a welcomed trope in darker cyberpunk and cosmic horror sci fi subgenres too.

Nobody would publish this thing nowadays
It´s one of those novels that took a unique idea and polished it until perfection, not one of the nowadays a novel a year mainstream stuff focused on agreeableness with as many readers as possible, but true literature with much of the authors´ self included and giving a penetration about how politically correct or disturbing it will finally be.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...classics208 s Meredith HolleyAuthor 2 books2,338

"Whenever you read a good book, it's the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't to read good books." - Jack Handey

This is one of the only books I plan never to finish. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I don't even know that I would say it was badly edited (a comment I read in another review), but I hated all of the characters. I loathed them by the time I stopped reading. I even hated Chick a little bit. I skipped some and glanced at the end to see if it would be worth finishing, but I couldn't get too excited about anything I saw. If anyone has a good reason for me to finish this book, I would be interested to hear it.

I was recommended to read it by two very different people - the prom queen my Senior year of high school, and a friend of mine who was later locked up in a high security mental ward in Seattle. Made me want to give it a try, you know? I don't know if I've ever hated so many characters in a book as though they were my personal enemies.

This book sat inside my nightstand for a couple of months, and then I just couldn't stand having it there any more, knowing it might be sneaking out and watching me while I slept. I took it to the library and handed it to one of the customer service people, asking him if I could give it to the library. I didn't want to sell it to a used book store and then have someone make the mistake I made of actually spending money on it; and I couldn't throw it away because I do think it's well written, so I had to give it more respect than that. The man tried to scan it for about thirty seconds as though I was returning it. "No," I explained, "I'm not returning it. I just want to give it to the library, if that's okay." "Oh," he said, looking at his computer screen and not giving any other response. I walked away quickly, just in case he was planning to tell me I couldn't leave the book. He's the librarian here at the Eugene Public library with the handlebar mustache, and the greying hair with a bowl cut, who looks he's part basset hound. That's a pretty irrelevant story, but why are you still reading this? (that's what Katherine Dunn said)disturbing hate-the-story-respect-the-writing pacific-northwest-glory ...more203 s1 comment Orsodimondo [part time reader at the moment]2,295 2,171

FREAKS OUT


Le immagini vengono dal bel film di Gabriele Mainetti “Freaks Out”.

Ho trovato le parole che seguono, scritte da Tommaso Pincio pochi giorni dopo la morte di Katherine Dunn(11 maggio) - che Pincio aveva conosciuto – semplici e illuminanti al contempo. Mi piace riportarle integralmente:

È quasi una legge di natura. In America, chiunque voglia rifarsi una vita si mette in viaggio verso ovest, verso l’Oceano Pacifico. La mèta ideale è la California, notoria patria di scoppiati. Ma se non si hanno abbastanza soldi per stabilirsi a Los Angeles o San Francisco, l’alternativa più economica è Portland, nell’Oregon, un bel po’ più a nord lungo la costa. È per questo che abbiamo fra noi i più scoppiati fra gli scoppiati. La crema dei disadattati, spiega Katherine Dunn. Non facciamo che accumulare gente strana. Qui a Portland siamo tutti profughi e fuggiaschi. Anche lei lo è. La sua era una tipica famiglia di proletari americani con il prurito ai piedi, che si spostava da una fattoria all’altra in cerca di lavori stagionali. Katherine è nata nel Kansas, ha viaggiato in lungo e in largo per gli Stati Uniti, alla fine si è fermata coi suoi a Portland, dove ha frequentato le scuole superiori e l’università. Aveva un bel caratterino. Voleva diventare scrittrice e ha vinto una borsa di studio per dedicarsi il suo primo romanzo. Le piaceva la boxe ed è diventata la prima giornalista donna esperta in questo sport per uomini. Ma prima di ciò è dovuta passare attraverso una lunga serie di esperienze piuttosto diversificate: cameriera, conduttrice radiofonica, decoratrice e truffatrice. Sì, anche truffatrice, perché a un certo punto, trovatasi a corto di soldi, non trovò di meglio da fare che staccare un assegno a vuoto. Tanta leggerezza le valse un soggiorno premio di un paio di settimane nelle patrie galere di Leavenworth, nel Kansas. Lo ricorda come un punto di svolta nella sua vita. Seppe ricavarne infatti qualcosa di buono, poiché proprio l’esperienza carceraria è alla base del suo libro d’esordio.



Il romanzo che le ha regalato il successo è però scaturito da un’esperienza decisamente più idilliaca, passeggiando in un giardino di rose. Ce n’erano di tutti i tipi e tutte bellissime, alcune erano davvero bizzarre in quanto frutto di innesti e incroci. Mi fecero tornare in mente un mio interesse di sempre, la biologia e le manipolazioni genetiche. Considerai che tra non molto saremmo stati in grado di progettare bambini alla stessa maniera delle rose. Mi venne l’idea per un romanzo e corsi a casa per scriverlo. Il romanzo è Geek Love. Uscito nel 1989, fu finalista del più prestigioso premio letterario americano, il National Book Award, e divenne un classico per un’intera generazione di scrittori, quella dei nostri tempi. Katherine Dunn è la madre infatti putativa di Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Dave Egger, Alice Sebold e soprattutto di Chuck Palahniuk, altro cantore degli squinternati dell’Oregon, che le ha dedicato un vivido e appassionato ritratto in Portland Souvenir, guida indispensabile per chiunque voglia conoscere questa città di stranezze. A distanza di quasi vent’anni Geek Love non è mai andato fuori catalogo, sempre ristampato ha finora venduto oltre seicentomila copie, una cifra più che ragguardevole considerato che stiamo parlando di un libro poco adatto ai deboli di stomaco. Non a caso i diritti per la trasposizione cinematografica furono a suo tempo acquistati da Tim Burton e Terry Gilliam. Quindi passarono nelle mani di Johnny Depp. Sebbene sia nata in un orto botanico, Geek Love non è una storia rose e fiori. A raccontarla in prima persona è Olympia Binewski, una nana pelata, albina e, per giunta, con la gobba. Il suo singolare aspetto non è frutto di uno sbaglio di natura, bensì una deviazione scientemente pianificata a tavolino.



I bambini di casa Binewski, chi più chi meno, hanno tutti qualche difettuccio che li rende assai particolari. Il fatto è che i loro genitori, essendo proprietari di un circo itinerante, il Favoloso Parco delle Attrazioni Binewski, hanno avuto la bella pensata di garantire alla prole un lavoro sicuro. Il sistema, ingegnoso quanto discutibile, è semplice: mettere in piedi una sorta di vivaio di mostri. Ogni qualvolta mamma Binewski si ritrova in dolce attesa comincia a ingurgitare schifezze di vario genere: pillole, veleno per topi, insetticidi e qualunque altra cosa possa favorire una bella malformazione alla creatura che porta in grembo. Se il bambino nasce morto, poco male. Lo si potrà sempre conservare sotto spirito in un barattolo di vetro da mostrare ai visitatori. Quelli che sopravvivono potranno invece lavorare nel circo tutta la vita. Quale miglior regalo si può fare ai propri figli se non la capacità di guadagnarsi da vivere limitandosi a essere se stessi? Ovviamente, il motto di casa Bineswki non poteva che essere: Veri mostri non si diventa, si nasce. E loro, i mostri, non si sentono per nulla handicappati. Anzi. Essere freak lo vedono come un dono, una benedizione. Badate, però: con il suo mirabolante romanzo, Katherine Dunn non ha inteso impressionarci né disgustarci, ha cercato soltanto di farci vedere la normalità da un altro punto di vista. Qualcuno ha detto che l’horror non è genere letterario, ma un’emozione, ed è proprio in questi termini che Geek Love può essere definito una storia horror. I suoi protagonisti non sono semplicemente intrappolati nelle loro deformità fisica, ma presi in un gioco al contempo felice e infernale, un gioco che tutti noi ben conosciamo: la morbosa e soffocante geometria degli affetti famigliari. Succede allora che l’orrore iniziale si trasforma in una comicità al contempo macabra e commovente che fa da guscio a un’inquietante possibilità. Che siano forse i sentimenti i veri mostri?



americana119 s Jason137 2,539

WTF?!

On the surface, Geek Love has it all: jealousy, betrayal, sexual objectification, and murderous revenge. ItÂ’s got a whole shitload of family drama topped off with a generous helping of physical deformities and possibly, possibly, a side of incest. (That partÂ’s not too clear, though.) The problem is, once you get past the shock value of wanting to fuck your brother who also happens to look a giant fish, there really isnÂ’t much going on here.

Right before starting this book, I read Middlesex. The similarities in theme (except for the bit about the giant fish) are uncanny: there’s incest, sexual objectification, and also a shitload of family drama. The difference is, Middlesex is an engaging novel while Geek Love, on the other hand, falls sadly flat. Besides the fact that I’m not usually keen on weakling protagonists—Oly is a patsy who gets pushed around her entire life by her older brother whom, for some reason, she never stands up to—I was actually more disturbed by the whole Miss Lick situation. I believe she’s supposed to be a second coming of Dr. Phyllis, disfiguring her clients as a means of helping them achieve enlightenment, yet for some strange reason she wants to remove Miranda’s tail? I don’t get it. You’d think she’d want to make it bigger or help her grow a second one or something. The premise of this just doesn’t seem very well thought out to me.

Chick is the one thing I did love about this book, though, and Geek Love could have used a lot of more of him. But as for the rest of the Binewskis, I could take Â’em or leave Â’em. I mean they might be marginally interesting, but not enough for me to care what ends up happening to them. So by the time whatever happens to them, um, happens, I had pretty much lost interest.


The Binewski Family.2011 for-kindle reviewed97 s Barry Pierce591 8,233

If David Lynch wrote a novel, this would be it. This novel is repugnant, disgusting, and baffling. I loved it. Who'd have thought that a book narrated by a bald female hunchbacked albino dwarf would be so beautiful? The trials and tribulations of the Binewski family are shocking and sickening but yet you feel a strange attraction to this family of freaks. This is one of the most original novels I've ever read, I will never come across anything this ever again. Reading "Geek Love" is an experience that I highly recommend to everyone, living or dead. You'll feel sick with awe. 20th-century read-in-201486 s James132 16

This book was as good as I heard it would and better. I love weird characters and twisted plot lines, but this went so far that it made me very uncomfortable. And I love the book for that.

The plot is simple and sick enough: Al and Lil Binewski, a young couple madly in love and struggling to save Al's family business, a traveling carnival fabulon, devise a plan to keep themselves from going under. Al, with Lil's eager permission, exposes his wife to radiation, presciptions, and whatever else may affect her pregnancies in unforeseen ways. The result is a line of children who are so strange that the the traveling carnival now has its main attraction, a bloodline as part of one of the most bizarre freak shows of all time.

I don't want to say any more about the book then that, but its really amazing. Expect to be disgusted, expect to be appalled, expect one of the most despicable antagonists in literary history, and expect one of the most repulsively loveable protagonists ever envisioned. This is a brutal and horrific book that also succeeds to be hysterical and heartbreaking, not to mention incredibly human, and that may be the most uncomfortable part of all: How these freaks of nature succeed so well at reflecting the inner-side of emotion, which is more human than one could ever hope their physical appearance can be. In short, expect to see yourself in and everyone you know in one character or another. There is a little bit of Chick and Arty in all of us.

This book is incredible.contemporary-fiction79 s Kelly (and the Book Boar)2,608 8,915

Find all of my at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

It's a snow day today and since my tiny humans are to the point where my snow days are numbered since they aren't so tiny any longer I decided to stay home with them in order to read porn make cookies and hot cocoa and scream loving things out the front door "IT'S 10 DEGRESS OUTSIDE - GET YOUR ASSES BACK IN HERE BEFORE YOU FREEZE TO DEATH!" But then I realized this book would be expiring from my Kindle in a minute and a half so I figured I better morph my plan and get a "review" churned out right quick.

To be honest, I don't really know what to say. Geek Love has been on my TBR since 2012. I'm fairly certain I even checked it out from the library at one point and returned it without reading. When Ron 2.0 was trying to bait all us creeps with his Last Days updates someone mentioned Geek Love and since I'm an asshole I went with that one rather than Ron's choice.

Enough with the backstory, right? You probably want to know about the book. Well, it goes a little something this . . . . .

"Tell about the time when Mama was the geek!"

Y'all know what a geek is, right?



Well, yeah, but this one isn't about the kind of geek McDreamy was before he got dreamy. It's about this kind . . . .



That was Mama Lil. Lil had big dreams of being a trapeze girl, but an unfortunate accident proved that wasn't meant to be. Lil became the geek instead, catching the eye of Papa Al. With the help of some choice dope, a few insecticides and a handful of radioisotopes the two Binewskis created a very unique family . . . .



Geek Love is the story of family, of sibling rivalry, of sacrifice, of religion and a need for fame and glory. It definitely reminds us all to . . .



And featured a character that, even though it's the first week of the new year, I will remember forever. Oh little Boychick . . . .



I have never read anything it and highly doubt I ever will. I don't know who to recommend this to because it is most assuredly not a story for everyone. But if you have a taste for the unusual and appreciate writing that isn't overdone or purple, but still makes an impact . . . .

"Do you know what the monsters and demons and rancid spirits are? Us, that's what. You and me. We are the things that come to the norms in nightmares. The thing that lurks in the bell tower and bites out the throats of the choirboys - that's you, Oly. And the thing in the closet that makes the babies scream in the dark before it sucks their last breath - that's me. And the rustling in the brush and the strange piping cries that chill the spine on a deserted road at twilight - that's the twins singing practice scales while they look for berries."

You should give it a go and become one of us . . . .


liburrrrrry-book -this-or-we-cant-be-friends mc-i-love-but-am-supposed-to-hate ...more65 s Richard Derus3,212 2,108

Book Circle Reads 26

Close to the top of any literature lover's life list of lovely books.

Well, now, upon more than a decade's passing, I can't say I agree with myself here.


Rating: 3.25* of five

The Book Description: Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset. 

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.


My Review: Little Katie D's report card:
Idea: A+
Execution: C+
Nutritional Value: D-

While I, un some, adored The Night Circus in all its flawed glory, I thought this book was a bag of generic cheez puffs versus Morgenstern's home-made real-butter cheese straws.

I must be hungry....

But seriously, the reason I've given it so many stars is the sheer audacity of Katherine Dunn's imagination. I was gobsmacked by Oly's impregnation. I was stunned by the hubris of the horrible, horrible parents of these deformed and bizarre siblings. I saw in this book a spiritual ancestor to Swamplandia!, and I felt some of the same things about that book as I do about this one: Oooh, so close! It's sooo close to being extraordinary in a good, satisfying way. Un Swamplandia!, though, I think this book really does deserve the time and attention of serious fiction readers.

Yes, it does fail on some levels, but it's ambitious enough to make even that really interesting. Yes, it lacks some hard-to-define something, that one thing that makes an unbelievable premise feel right and inevitable, but instead it leaves the reader with a weird, uneasy new set of images imprinted on the brain.

But most of all, despite the ways it's not perfect, one thing it is, is fun. A fun-to-read failure is better for summer than a successful sob-fest, no?76 s Chris67 415

If the world is a carnival, then we were all born to be its freaks. After all, when each of us arrived on the scene, naked and covered in blood and goo, we were unique specimens. But soon after our births, a member of The Cult of Normalcy gave us a pamphlet and offered us the opportunity to blend in with the rest of society. Most of us accepted the offer. Loneliness is a scary thing, after all. So here we are trying to live our lives everyone else, constantly checking the mirror to make sure we look everyone else, and taking some time out of our day to laugh and gawk at those who have failed miserably at our collective endeavor. If what we see in the mirror doesn't reflect the rest of society, we do things to fix ourselves. It's exhausting work, trying to be everyone else, but it's worth it because we're not alone and that makes us happy, right?

I love Geek Love for reminding me that I'm a freak. I am the only person who popped out of my mother's vagina on a certain Sunday in November of 1978 at 10:56 a.m. at a little Catholic hospital in suburban Maryland. No one other than me has my brain, my heart, and my penis and it is time I started using all three of them to the best of their individual abilities. (Sorry, ladies. I'm happily married.)

I'll finish with a great quote from the book:

There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity...

Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull. read-in-200956 s Misty Marie Harms559 593

Who told me to read this book? We can't be friends anymore
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