Home :: Books :: Women's Fiction  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction

Geek Love : A Novel

Geek Love : A Novel

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: One of those books that you keep telling yourself "one more chapter and i'll go to bed", but stay up half the night reading from cover to cover. Seriously disturbing, enlightening, humorous, perverse and moving....an overall creatively alluring experience. One of the most amazing reading experiences of my life.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Probably the single most important book of my life, so far.
Review: That sounds melodramatic, but I've never been so moved by a story, or placed so much emotional investment into fictional characters. I first encountered this novel in college Freshman English. This is one of those books where you either get it or you don't get it. Most of the other students, cheerleader types fresh off the high school boat, didn't get it. They found it unneccessarily "gross and crude", as well as "just weird". Our instructor was generally chastised by his class for being into stupid, bizarre literature. I, on the other hand, spent the whole semester obsessing over "Geek Love", reading it at least three times and underlining favorite phrases, like "inchy little marks like the hesitation cuts on a suicide's wrist." I found Dunn's writing courageous, ingenious, delicious. So poetic in it's monstrosity, so lovely in it's ugliness. I loved her humane monsters, hated her monstrous humans, and discovered that the more I read, the less I could tell the difference between them. My concern and involvement in Oly's life almost scared me. I obsessed over the importance of color in the novel. My crumpled paperback copy is filled with pencil marks noting each time "red" or "green" is mentioned. In the end I felt drained, but inspired. Katherine Dunn altered my ideas about how far to go with an image. She showed me beauty can be created from ugliness, profound thoughts can spring from crude words. All I can say to her is "Thank you."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Awe of an excellent writer
Review: I just finished reading Geek Love, and like many others who have read this book, I gave it a ten. Profound characters and a plot which tied all together at the end made this book a must read. For the first time in my life, I found every single aspect of the book to be necessary and crucial to the plot. I am usually skeptical about books with such outlandish titles and storylines, but this was the "Big Lebowski". I kept reading, looking forward to every insight and detail of each and every character in this novel. Dunn has outdone herself with this magnum opus. I cannot say how much this I enjoyed this book. I feel that the only way I can pay attribute to Dunn is by writing an English paper focusing on why this book should be taught in school. Sure it has its vulgar and raunchy moments, but the worldy lessons explained in it override them ten-fold.

I can only say thank you to Miss Dunn for writing such an excellent novel, and I truly, revere your work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: not sure about this one...
Review: I'm just not sure what I thought about this book. I just finished it and am left feeling kind of numb, I guess. Was there really a story to this book? Apart from following the Binewski's life, there was really only the Miranda plot, and it was quite sidelined, I thought. I must say, the characters were very interesting, and the absurdity and strangeness of it all kept me reading. I think that what makes this book worthwhile is the relationships between the family members. It was very complex that way, but on the whole, I have to say I have read better books, but certainly this one stands apart from the rest -- it is definately unlike anything I'm likely ever to read again. Not a waste of time, but it didn't amaze me, either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thank you Katherine Dunne!!!
Review: I would just like to thank Katherine Dunne for writing this book. This was one of the most touching, riveting, humorous, but sometimes sad books I've ever read. Dunne brought these characters to life with such delicacy that I almost felt like I was at the circus with them. This book really made me think about how narrow minded our society's idea of normal is. Normal isn't how you look. It is much more than that. This book made me realize that it is okay not to conform. Overall I absolutely loved this book and I would recommend it to anyone.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Exploitive and manuipulative
Review: I find it more disturbing that readers would find this enjoyable than that it was actually written. Experimentation of this type on people has been condemned by most thoughtful societies. To try to imply that parental affection has any role in the abusive treatment of the children is a travesty.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best book I've read in a loooong time!!!
Review: Of the many factors involved in my forming opinions about books, what separates the "9's" from the "10's" is whether or not I wanted it to continue beyond the given ending. In the case of Geek Love, I could have read another 350 pages. Dunn manages to give us a cast of characters that is both pathetic yet intoxicatingly self-assured in their own moral ascendancy over the outside world of "norms." It is an engaging book which demands that the reader a reevaluate his/her own self-image, and makes you really think about the times you've caught yourself staring at a "Freak." In a sense, Dunn gives us a free show, at which we can conjure our own images, and sate that morbid fascination we all seem to have with everything, and everyone, who stands out as "Different." If you've never read it, stop everything, get a copy, and start reading. I guarantee that anyone who does so with an eye on themselves as well as Arty, Oly, the Twins and Chick will not be disappointed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.
Review: I found this book to be the strangest, richest, most intriguing books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The characters jump off the page and as weird as they all are, they are somehow not only believable, but you feel bonded with them somehow at the end.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a good book occasionally marred by awful writing
Review: I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. It seemingly has many of the elements I look for in fiction: strong plot, absorbing characters, shocking horror and vivid descriptions of evil and debautchery. I love that sort of thing. I find many reviews here criticizing books for their darkness, for their lack of a neat, tidy, packaged, tacked on happy ending so the reader can go away feeling all is right in the world. This form of insipidness is frustrating because it narrows the scope of so many people, forcing them to shun something most likely better and more lasting than whatever cheery nonesense they snuggle up with an hour before bedtime, sucking all veracity from their dreams and trapping them in a schizophenic, skipping record of the same unrealistic thing over and over and over again. Of course Geek Love isn't especially realistic. But, within the context of the story, with a fully heightened suspension of disbelief we settle into taking for granted that someone has telekinetic powers, that someone has developed mental domination abilities, that everyone is schemeing and out to get everyone else and the weak or the kind-hearted are destined for misery. Stripping away the actions, the motivations are very real and the pain suffered by everyone should strike chords with anyone who's ever lived in a family. The main problem, however, is that Ms. Dunn just isn't a very good writer. Oh, she can tell a story pretty well and make it original and unique, but she has a self-indulgent inclination to go off on these philosophical passages, superficially in the narrator's voice, and muddle them up on top of that. These passages, usually taking up the first few paragraphs of a new chapter, are just horrible. Nonesensical gibberish, flowing like a rusty old garden hose with so many holes poked in it hardly anything trickles out the proper end. Perhaps Ms. Dunn felt she was being lyrical, felt there needed to be some superfluous explaination of the narrator's feelings after relating a particularly awful event, but these brief passages make no sense in the long run, with feux-beutific lines and rambling mish-mosh prose. I liked the book, but at times I got so annoyed with this presumption, I considered setting it aside, possibly to wrap up and give to one of my more pretentious friends who looks for deep meaning in every petty thing.

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: Thank You, Kathrine.
Review: Geek Love is wonderful. It gave me humor and hope. I hope it does the same for your other readers.


<< 1 .. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates