Geek Love : A Novel

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Summary: Ugly, humorless and ultimately trivial.
Review: I picked this book up hoping it would be clever and unusual...but it ended up being a superficial cesspool masquerading as "art".

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Summary: A touching sense of the macabre. Geek Love is a gem.
Review: There are geeks of body and geeks of mind. The central point of the tale is to throw in your face the visible (read physical) aspects of geekdom. Other than the use of chemical cocktails to mutate their children which they cherished, I didn't see too much different (context considered) from the hideious side of reality. Consider this, perhaps it's just a tale of abuse (embryonic) and it's aftermath.

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Summary: I wanted to love it but just couldn't get into it
Review: So many told me to keep reading, that I would end up LOVING Geek Love. But I didn't. After a month of literally trudging through this book, I had to toss it aside. And I HATE not finishing a book.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but missing something...
Review: I was very engrossed in this novel, was fascinated by the characters, was simultaneously appalled and intrigued by the excesses of Dunne's style, but when i reached the end, i was left wondering what it had all been building to. There was no satisfactory climax and the way the characters are dealt with at the end is very insufficient. A good climax or ending should build logically from the rest of the narrative, and the wrapping up of either half of the plot (either the flashback or the "now" sections) felt tacked on. Especially what ultimately becomes of Oly at the end seemed to me a cop-out. This is definitly not a book for everyone, but if you are merely looking for a fast paced read with no real depth (though Dunne and many of these reviewers seem to think it makes a profound statement on the human condition-- gag gag) i could reccomend this one.

Rating:
Summary: The best novel I have ever read.
Review: In an image-laden narrative in diary style, Katherine Dunn presents us a world that is shocking in its grotesque warping of mores and similarity to our own psyches. She drives right into the heart as she swells it with compassion for her characters. Fantastic, horrifying, and home-grown.

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Summary: This book is amazing!
Review: The first time I picked up a copy of "Geek Love", I read it cover to cover within hours. Since then, I haven't been able to get enough of Katherine Dunn's imaginative prose. I am now up to my 7th reading of this remarkable book. I can honestly say that Geek Love can be considered a contemporary classic. If ever you want a little intrigue and pulse...read this book.

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Summary: "Geek Love" redefines the word normal.
Review: "Geek Love" by Katherine Dunn is one of those books that exists in a world of its own. It invites you in with the turn of the first page and kicks you out with the turn of the last leaving you depressed and betrayed and wanting more. But in a good way. The smells and sounds and sights and sensations of Dunn's mythical world are captivating and scintillating and peculiarly grotesque and obscene and above all shocking!!! Just when you think it's gone as far as it can go, it literally drags further!!!!! The main character and narrator of the tale, Olympia Binewski, is an albino hunchback dwarf who in the company of her siblings is considered TOO NORMAL. Her fish-finned torso brother and Siamese twin sisters are the money making acts of the Binewski family's traveling Carnival Fabulon. The freaky geeks are products of their parent's experimental drug influenced pregnancies, the mother ingesting ridiculously toxic concoctions in hopes of mutating her children so they can become contributing members of the circus family. Didn't I say shocking?!!? But it's not the warped weirdness of this book that leaves you yearning to escape your normal life and live within its pages; it's Dunn's potent words of wisdom and chilling commentary on life's miseries spoken through Olympia Binewski who you grow to love and miss once you've inhaled the book in two sittings.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it.
Review: Fabulous story. Great characters. At times found myself skimming to get to more descriptions of freaks or freakish things. Dunn often seemed to know what kinds of questions I'd have about freaks (how do they have sex?) and answered them. As a voyeur, I give the book a big thumbs up. I was not led to reevaluate what it means to be normal or anything like that. Instead, I decided this book was actually about freaks rather than a lesson in why it is ok for me to be less than normal. Give the freaks a room of their own!

Rating:
Summary: abnormalcy made normal
Review: At first, the reader is disgusted with the experimentation of the Binewski family. Reading further, however, we begin to see the bigger picture. What could be better than subverting our own ideologies... taking our disgust with abnormalcy and gradually turning it into normalcy? Arturo snears at "the ... norms." That's great! For Arturo and Miss Lick both desire an inner concentration.

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Summary: I read a library copy and bought 2 copies for friends!
Review: I took this book out of the library because the last sentence on the front flap of the dust jacket stated, "It would make you redefine 'normal'." That piqued my curiosity. What a superbly, well-written book on a rather "macabre" subject.

I read this book years ago before it actually got critical acclaim. Although I do not remember the details, I will never forget the unselfish love Oly had for her brother Aqua Boy. Her love surpassed what we would expect of any "human being." Katherine Dunn's skillful handling made the story less horrifying and her "circus weirdos" quite "human." This book has certainly made me "redefine 'normal'"! Very readable and thought-provoking.