Geek Love: A Novel
by Katherine Dunn
List Price:
Our Price: $7.25
You Save: $8.70 (55%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.81 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
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: 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!
Summary of Geek Love: A Novel
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.
A wild, often horrifying, novel about freaks, geeks and other aberrancies of the human condition who travel together (a whole family of them) as a circus. It's a solipsistic funhouse world that makes "normal" people seem bland and pitiful. Arturo the Aqua-Boy, who has flippers and an enormous need to be loved. A museum of sacred monsters that didn't make it. An endearing "little beetle" of a heroine. Sort of like Tod Browning's Freaks crossed with David Lynch and John Irving and perhaps George Eliot -- the latter for the power of the emotions evoked.
United States Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in United States Books
Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humorby Michael J. Rosen
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2000-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Gifts of the Bodyby Rebecca Brown
Harper Perennial; Published: 1995-08-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.57
Price in other shops:
Love and Liesby Kimberla Lawson Roby
William Morrow; Published: 2007-01-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.96
Price in other shops:
Blues Dancing: A Novelby Diane Mckinney-Whetstone
HarperTorch; Published: 2005-03-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right & Right Is Wrongby Alan Colmes
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2004-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Hunger Point: A Novelby Jillian Medoff
Harpercollins; Published: 1997-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
The Price of Bloodby Chuck Logan
Harpercollins; Published: 1997-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $25.99
Blue Hour: Poemsby Carolyn Forche
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.96
Price in other shops:
Blue Suburbia: Almost a Memoirby Laurie Albanese
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Kindness of Strangers: A Novelby Katrina Kittle
William Morrow; Published: 2006-01-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.64
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
I, Robotby Isaac Asimov
Spectra; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.08
Price in other shops:
Hottentot Venus: A Novelby Barbara Chase-Riboud
Anchor; Published: 2004-11-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.60
Price in other shops:
Epilepticby David B.
Pantheon; Published: 2006-07-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.85
Price in other shops:
Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust (New Edition) (New Directions Paperbook)by Nathanael West
New Directions; Published: 2009-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.86
Price in other shops:
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A: The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time Chosen by the Members of The Science Fiction Writers of AmericaOrb Books; Published: 2009-07-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.61
Price in other shops:
Truth & Beauty: A Friendshipby Ann Patchett
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-04-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.95
Price in other shops:
Autobiography of a Faceby Lucy Grealy
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops:
First, Do No Harmby Lisa Belkin
Fawcett; Published: 1994-03-02; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.36
Price in other shops:
Sulaby Toni Morrison
Vintage; Published: 2004-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabledby Robert F. Murphy
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.27
Price in other shops: