Geek Love : A Novel

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Summary: Oh man, I'm a norm!
Review: I want to be a freak, too! Maybe not an Arturan, but I could deal with a hump or a tail... Maybe Santa will make me into a freak for my Christmas present. This book is definitely not for the faint of heart - read and enjoy, freak lovers!

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Summary: Worthy read ... but be ready!
Review: DISTURBING. I still cannot eat at a restaurant called "Arturo's" because of the character by the same name in the book. Very well paced and written. Only the ending left me a tad disappointed. The circus family literary answer to the film "The House of Yes." (Which is the more dysfunctional family?) But endearing as the "Simpsons."

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Summary: A Wonderful and Unique Story
Review: All I have to say is W-O-W. I saw the title of this book in Freak Like Me by Jim Rose, and picked up a copy of it to read on vacation. The first thing you must understand if you choose to read this book- it will be nothing like you have ever read. Filled with very interesting characters and subplots, this book just screams unique and is one of the bare essentials for a good collection of books.

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Summary: NO FICTION WILL EVER SHOCK YOU LIKE GEEK LOVE
Review: Uniquely special and wonderful. Horrific, grotesque and yet weirdly warm and touching. The shock value pulled me in, as my mother's medical books did when I was a kid. (Turn the page, scream! Turn the page, scream!) But it was the complex characters that kept me reading and challenged my opinion of societal "norms." I read this book a number of years ago, and have since bought it 10 times for various friends. It is the only book that I have read more than once. I heard that Gus Van Saint was considering directing a movie version on the book. That would be fabulous.

Rating:
Summary: LOVED IT!
Review: I read this book four years ago and it still creeps up on me at random moments. I loved it, I normally read classics and while this was nothing like anything I have ever read, I recommend it to the world. Great buy!

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Summary: IT PUTS A WHOLE DIFFERENT LIGHT ON DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES
Review: This book was intense, in the way it took the extreme and put it comfortably,(to comfortably) into the "normal family" world. Plus the added religious twist makes one see how pathetic people can be. I reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys powerful, twisted, grabbing tales of our strange world. For this story has probaly happened on this planet somewhere. Sometime

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Summary: Outstanding book about a family of side-show freaks
Review: Jim Rose, the leader in the current side-show freak revival, is said to have been inspired by this tale of old time traveling family freak shows. If you've ever wanted to eat fire or hammer a nail in your nose, this is the book for you. I have seen Jim Rose's side show freaks, and while I am not old enough to have seen the last of the traveling carnivals (alas!), this book by Katherine Dunn captures the spirit of those days. The family is led by two parents, born and raised in the circus, who do amazing and horrifying things to their bodies in order to birth a family of side-show freaks. A tragedy of a "norm" results in them leaving the baby on a church doorstep. The writing by Katherine Dunn allows you to feel the disgust for norms, and almost makes you with you were a freak as well. Ms. Dunn is a very fine author

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Summary: Makes you sick, makes you think, makes you keep reading.
Review: Geek Love begins with one man's twisted realization of the American dream. Al Binewski, self-made man and owner of a fading second-rate circus, hits upon an ingenious idea: rather than hire freaks and pay them, he will create his own by dosing his pregnant wife with various combinations of drugs, chemicals and even radioactive materials. When these offspring are born, flawed in both body and mind, their parents praise them for their abnormalities and teach them to perform. Seen mostly in flashback through the eyes of Olympia, the bald, albino dwarf whose fairly routine deformities pale next to the more spectacular mutations of her siblings, the novel explores family dynamic in a family where the competition to be the most freakish and thus the most prized is constant and intense. Olympia is torn between her slavish devotion to her brother and lover Arturo (the "Aqua Boy" with fins for limbs) and her other family members, who are constantly endangered by the megalomaniacal Artie's need for fame. This novel is definitely not beach reading - it challenges just about every one of our assumptions about family, love, and beauty. In one early scene, the family is attacked by a gun-wielding madman who takes one look at them and snaps; as he is being arrested a woman comments that he did the right thing, that such a collection of monsters is better off dead - and one is uncertain whether or not to agree with the stranger. Such crises of conscience confront the reader on nearly every page. The plotting and psychological studies are brilliant right up to the Armageddon-like climax. The novel is wrenching, and hideous, and agonizing to read - yet it achieves a beauty that transcends normal perception. It is truly a masterpiece

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Summary: Bizarre, compelling story of love in an imperfect world
Review: If you like the bizarre, you'll love Geek Love.
Love in/within the freakshow world provides the foundation for Dunn's work. She draws you into the "abnormal" world of the freakshow, and relates it out to the real world. People have feelings and Katherine Dunn shows how genetic mutants have feelings too.

Rating:
Summary: Sure to be a cult classic
Review: Wildly entertaining, soulfully funny and often-times difficult to swallow. Our hero is lovable and gruesome; born to a freak show family, into a disfigured body. His cold, calculating plans bring him a following of the zaniest, most disturbing characters you have ever met between the covers of a book. Be prepared for a read that will make you look inside yourself, and your sickest, craziest fantasies and say, "I'm okay!" :) p.s. try to stay away from sharp objects while reading it.