Geek Love : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: One Hel'a'va Wild Ride!
Review: One of the best books I've ever read. "John Irving" with some "Kurt Vonnegut" thrown in. Wild and bizarre, yet heartbreaking and funny. Katherine Dunn takes you into a world, where most people wouldn't go, but a place you must see! Fabulous Read!

Rating:
Summary: Damn cool book
Review: This book missed the five star rating due to a slow, plodding writting style, but it is still a great read. None of it shocked me or disgusted me like many other readers have stated, instead I found myself engrossed in the oddness of the characters, especially some of the periferral ones (the Bag Man is great.) I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if I hadn't taken a month long break in the middle of reading. It gripped me right out, reading the first half in one sitting, but it was rough getting back into it. Once it hit a certain point though, it was clear through to the end.

Rating:
Summary: This book scares people in Iowa
Review: I hope you don't read this book. You probably don't deserve to. If you read it and like it, you probably "get" most of what the world has to offer. If you don't like this book, you need to keep to Tom Clancy or realize your fragile ego can't admit that good books like this exist and can be found by lots of people. This book is one of the 5 books I recommend everyone read.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant & Demented & Bizarre & Grostesque & Breathtaking
Review: This is perhaps the most effectively morbid and disturbing book I've ever read, and also one of the best. From the very first page when the circus master refers to his creations/children as his "dreamlets" you are sucked in, and almost inexplicably you find yourself caring for the welfare of this deranged family of circus freaks. I've never found another book I believed so wholly during the reading of it--which is some feat of writing since the characters & plotting are just utterly, shockingly impossible.

Rating:
Summary: You either love it or hate it. I HATED this book
Review: I couldn't figure out the point. It grossed me out. It's morbid. I slogged through it because it came highly recommended. I had to force myself to finish this book. If you are interested in freaks, read Angela Carter. I could at least see the point in her books. I hated Geek Love. I kept asking myself Why?

Rating:
Summary: Certainly deserves all the praise
Review: I just started working in a bookstore and I needed to select a few "staff picks." This book was one of the first to come to mind. It's a wonderfully surrealistic exploration into places and emotions most readers would rather not examine. It's not an easy novel to read, but one where I feel that the reader has "grown" a little after finishing it. After I read the previous review I felt that I had to add my two cents worth and try to get those ratings back up there.

Rating:
Summary: Dying to be "original"
Review: How is it that a book such as _Geek Love_ can end up raking in the readership? By masquerading as a tour de force of supposedly unexplored themes. I detest the way Katherine Dunn self-indulgently explained her "unusual" life in her little autobiographical narrative, as if this adds justification to her decision to write such a shallow book. Furthermore, this book has been aided by the reputation which has grown from the ignorance of those who haven't first acquainted themselves with a few more original writers who explored these very themes (manufactured disfigurement as a social metaphor) in much more interesting, not to mention more literary manners. The first such writer who comes to mind is Angela Carter, whose prose may be ponderous, yet it yields the kind of depth that _Geek Love_ is sadly lacking. I am sorry that Katherine Dunn has experienced the kind of success she has. This book has been recommended to me many times, and when I finally ended up (shamefully) purchasing a copy, I found it only good enough to rid myself of (with a disclaimer) to a person who lamented having never finished the book, but who wanted to. This person was travelling to Mexico and wanted something to read. Along with _Geek Love_, (which I was happy to part with), I gave her a copy of _Nights at the Circus_ by Angela Carter and advised her to use her discriminating faculties. Don't further the idea that wholesale rip-offs should magically become bestsellers just because a few self-professed iconoclasts say so.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfuly Fascinating
Review: I am a lover of Jane Austen, Tom Hardy and George Elliot. And just as their characters stay with me, so does the family Dunn created in Geek Love. I read it about 6 years ago and am about to reintroduce myself to these wonderful people. I thought I would encourage the rest of you to do the same -- even if this is not the type of book you would "normally" read.

Rating:
Summary: From one Showman to the world.
Review: Coming from the carnival 'Fabulon' industry, I must say that this is one of those quiet little books that becomes a timeless classic, in the style of a Prayer for Owen Meaney. Read it 3 times now, and every time I pick up something new. Don't wait, start today.

Rating:
Summary: Freaky fun not for the faint hearted.
Review: I was told about this book by a English professor who gave me the warning that it is not for the weak. I have now read the book twice, and she was correct but the book was so different it was refreshing. It's not everyday that you hear the life story of circus "freaks" but as you read Geek Love, you find their lives are relatively normal and the Norms are the ones who are a little off their rockers. If you can't handle a little gore don't bother, but for everyone else you'll love it and the wierdness of it will never leave your mind..