Rating: 
Summary: Geek Love is compellingly strange story of motherly love.
Review: Geek Love is one of the most bizarre books you are likely to read. A story of a circus family who create their own side show freaks by fetal interference, the story moves briskly through the lives of the offspring. Along the way, the author, Katherine Dunn, explores the jealousies and competitiveness that are common to all families. It vividly shows the costs of interfering with natural processes. The transformation of one of these children to a modern day messianic caricature leads to a shocking ending that will both satisfy and appal the reader. This is not a book for the weak hearted nor for a person who cannot separate strangeness of the events from the message between the lines, but it is well worth the time of literate readers looking for a really unique concept
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to read, but impossible to ignore
Review: Much like its subject matter, the side show "freak", this book can be ugly and disturbing, but it is impossible to turn away. Told from the viewpoint of the bald, Albino, hunchback dwarf daughter of a mother who deliberately took drugs and chemicals to give birth to freaks for the family carnival. They have a son with flippers, and daughters who are Siamese twins, and a seemingly normal son who has telekinesis. Katherine Dunn's imagination is frightening. The story runs the gamut from gratuitous violence to incest to rape and murder. I could not wait to finish the book, but once I did, I never wanted to read it again. I was disturbed, confused, intrigued. There are some gaping holes in the story, you have to suspend disbelief, and the current story about the woman who disfigures women with battery acid is downright chilling. But, it certainly captures your interest. It is unique, and I, personally, had seen nothing of its type before. It's difficult for me to say whether I recommended it. I can only say proceed with caution; it is engrossing and also terribly un-nerving.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning: Viewer Discretion Advised
Review: I couldn't put this book down, and carried it around for about a week, deeply and happily immersed. But, just for comparison, when I showed it to my boyfriend and he read the back cover, he physically recoiled and hastily handed it back to me. Funnily enough, he enjoys true-crime books/programs, and I can't stand the things. I think it's the same impulse though: we feel that these things, though repulsive to many, have things to teach us about human nature. With that in mind, I have to commend Katherine Dunn for a very well written, memorable, and thought-provoking book -- with the disclaimer it is absolutely not for everyone. Basically, if you are armed with the knowledge that the book is about a family of circus freaks (including a fish-boy with no real limbs, siamese twins, and an albino dwarf, all purposely bred for birth defects with the use of drugs and radiation), and you are assured that ***it only gets worse from there***, and you still find yourself curious, then for goodness sake go out and get the book right now, because it delivers everything you would want except perhaps for a happy ending. While I find writers like Chuck Palanuik and Bret Easton Ellis to be smug and shallow (there goes my reviewer rating!) I find them to be the only comparison to this book for actual shock value. I can't remember the last time I was actually shocked, not disturbed but shocked, at a book, and without being inclined to throw it out the window. The amount of humanity and vibrancy in these characters despite their ugly and often cruel natures kept me riveted. Highly recommended, for those with strong stomachs.
Rating:
Summary: I hope...
Review: How surprised was I to hear some book called Geek Love(?) come so highly recommended, and who'd of ever thought I'd read it?... Then find me thinking, "I'm not finding this as disturbing or shocking as it seems set up to be," enthralled though I am... Apart from it's subject matter GL seemed familiar, similar to other works in several ways: writing style, theme, writer's trickery. Comparisons come easy and are valid. Yet this work stands, for me, very much on it's own, and the reading experience suggests it's greater than the sum of it's parts. Maybe it was a philosophy that hooked me (and then came Fight Club... ), or just some magic that I'm not sharp enough to identify. Eventually I discovered my jaw extended, telling me I could be surprised, that I wasn't immune. Oftentimes it was the complete, complex psychologies that impressed me most, and the work suffered when such details were half-baked. In Geek Love's world we may need to suspend much disbelief, but overall I found Dunn's logic surprisingly intricate. Her storytelling I found very effective, ever captivating, pulling me forward, forward, forward, while her "lyric" prose was there entertaining me throughout. Though I wanted at times to take a break (just to breathe, shake off the obsession,and assess: do I really like this book so incredibly much? do I LOVE this book??), I honestly felt rather powerless to slow down. I was also feeling uncharacteristically co-dependent: wanting everybody to read this book, at least talk to me about it, or ask questions, just please be interested too! please? I'll keep my criticisms from contaminating others' experience, but even halfway through, when I was able too pull myself away and relax, I found myself thinking about the book often and eager to spend time reading. Closing the book I may have lost some of my earlier enthusiasm, yet... find me turning back to that most marvelous of beginnings... I am satisfied, and for a time, however brief, I've awakened a bit more love, certainly compassion, for all you individual strangers that I pass out there on the streets of the real (flesh and blood) world. somethings persist: I hope everybody reads this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Disapointing and Boring
Review: This book is the type of book that appeared to have great promise, but sadly fell terribly short. It was a book, that through reviews, promised a dark shadowing prespective upon life, a certain lusted after grity quality that was enduring and of constant interest to the reader. It was a book however that I could not force myself to read past the fifth chapter due to it's undeniably terrible plot, story and general writing style. It's not because I found it disturbing, most usually the more contaversial the better for me, but it was boring, it dragged along like a pitiful tin can tied to the back of a rusty car 10 years after the wedding was through and the divorce had come through. I get the idea of the story, that even though they're freaks they all love each other in their own little twisted way, but I'm sorry that theme is overrated and overused in modern literature. I got the feeling the author was attempting to be witty, and literary, knowing not that her attempts failed miserably. Oh well though, all is well that ends well I assume, which refers to the fact that I traded Geek Love in at a second hand book store for a much better book (doesn't almost anything surpass this stinker?) and even managed to get some money from it too as when you don't get past chapter 5 in a book it keeps it condition pretty damn crisp and clean.
Rating:
Summary: A keeper in its strangeness!
Review: A man and his wife, owners of Binewski's Carnival Fabulon, acquire many odd human freaks of nature, including their own children (both alive and dead) as part of their traveling show. As odd as they are within the context of the story, the freaks tend to be the norm. "Normal" people flock to see the show and some even begin to amputate body parts in order to be more like Arty, the charismatic flipper-limbed star of the show.
Here is a most amazing book that will be either loved or hated by its readers. The writing is wonderful. The topic is difficult. If the reader is not offended by the material and stops halfway through in disgust, the story itself turns out to be imaginative and thought-provoking. It brings to mind concepts of what is "normal" versus freaky as well as makes us wonder why people often so blindly follow cults.
Rating:
Summary: Truly One of A Kind!
Review: The story begins with the Binewski family, headed by parents Al and "Crystal" Lil, who run a traveling circus called the Binewski's Carnival Fabulon. Right away, you know this is no ordinary family. Long-legged, gorgeous Lil worked as a carnival geek (a person who bites the heads off live chickens as an act) in the Fabulon before she and Al married. Al, the ringmaster, later conceived of a brilliant idea, perfect for a budget-minded circus owner. They would breed their own circus acts! Through drug experimentation and other means, Al and Lil managed to fulfill their dream.
The offspring that followed were a unique bunch indeed. Arturo, the Aqua Boy who had flippers instead of limbs and performed in a water-filled tank. Electra and Iphigenia, the Siamese twin girls who had separate upper bodies, but shared one pair of hips and legs and played amazing piano duets. Olympia, a bald, albino, hunchbacked dwarf who helped call crowds to visit her talented siblings. And lastly, Fortunato, nicknamed "Chick", whose abilities were remarkable even by Binewski family standards...
Olympia is the narrator for our fantastic story, and after a quick picture of the happy, if unconventional Binewskis, the novel jumps ahead a couple decades. We find Olympia living in a run-down boarding house, her senile mother manning the front desk. Olympia stalks in secret a fellow boardinghouse inhabitant named Miranda, never telling her that she is the mother Miranda has never known. The Binewskis and their Fabulon are no more. How did it end this way? What events came to pass that destroyed the family and brought its three remaining members to this sad conclusion? I had to find out, which is why I couldn't put this novel down.
Geek Love is not for the faint of heart. Highly reminiscent of the controversial 1932 horror movie Freaks, Dunn's novel has the same shock value and more. In the book, as in the movie, it's not the sideshow people who are the unfortunates, it's the "norms"--at least, from the Binewski family's point of view. Olympia considers herself unlucky to be so ordinary, her physical appearance remarkable, but not remarkable enough to draw a crowd as a paying act. Her loss is our gain, since playing dogsbody to her more successful siblings puts her in a position to see and hear a great deal, and she makes for a compelling, sympathetic narrator even when her motives are hard for us to fathom.
The main characters' physical deformities are a big part of the book, but perhaps not in a way you'd think. They don't pity themselves for being different. Just the opposite, in fact. Their deformities are valued, the weirder, the better. Poor Fortunato is nearly abandoned at birth when his abilities weren't immediately obvious.
Dunn has written an elegant story, one where the suspense builds almost intolerably until the end--and she keeps you constantly guessing, unfolding each new horror and twist like some literary Dance of the Seven Veils. From the almost the very beginning, we know the fortune of the Binewskis fell to pieces, but we don't know how or why. And believe me, even if I'd tried, I'd never have been able to guess the events of the novel. Each time I thought I couldn't be more disturbed or shaken, I'd turn the page and something else even more twisted would be taking place.
It's hard to say what I liked about this novel. I loved it as a whole, but contemplating its separate portions is a tough job. It just works. Dunn takes something shocking and so far removed from the average person's experiences and makes it very real. Often, the language is as lovely as the events it describes are repelling. You also can't help but read with a growing sense of horror, knowing that this little empire all comes tumbling down. The characters' interactions are so complex, with the happy family dynamic getting more and more warped as the book progresses. And the pace of the book...wow. I couldn't believe how well Dunn spun out the suspense and the slow downward spiral of the Binewski family to its crashing end. I find myself not wanting to say much about specific details at all, for fear of detracting from the experience for anyone who wants to read it.
Not everyone could pull off a story like this, so I take my hat off to Katherine Dunn. Unfortunately, the striking differences that separate this novel from other works of fiction will also be a big turn-off to many readers. Geek Love is incredibly graphic (although it contains the most poetic description of oral chicken beheadings that I've ever read). It's ugly, not so much in the physical appearance of the Binewskis, but in the way they end up treating one another, sibling and parental relationships just getting more and more poisoned. I don't recommend this for the squeamish or those who get upset easily by tragedy. If what I've described already sounds off-putting, trust me, you don't want to hear the rest of it.
As full of dysfunction as this book is, I can't see Oprah picking this for her club anytime soon. There are some things too way out there for a mainstream audience, and I think Geek Love is one of them. I'm glad I did take a chance and read it, however, and it's one book I won't soon forget. Try not to miss it. Another favorite recommendation is an amusing little novel called The Losers Club by Richard Perez.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly heartbreaking
Review: In the spirit of lower-caste Indians who cripple their children, guaranteeing them carreers in begging, the Binewski family engineers their children for unique birth-defects, providing them a life as carnival freaks.
The history (and eventual downfall) of the family is interwoven with a woman's quest to protect the daughter who she had to give up as a child.
The characters are complex, flawed and deeply human.
This story is at once frightening, heart-breaking, funny and inspiring.
Rating:
Summary: Beastly portrayal of physical deformity & mental oppression
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Sick and Twisted
Review: I should have read why some of the reviewers rated this book a one before I read it. This book just did not do it for me. I could not get past the sick mind of Arturo and cult-like following of his family and other characters in the book. A Great Disappointment!!!
|
