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Summary: Without a doubt one of the BEST books I've read!
Review: This book is so full of life! Dunn creates this entire world, complete with idioms, that envelopes you immediately. I love, love, love this book! I've made everyone I know read it. If you can read one book for a time, make it this one.
Rating: 
Summary: disturbing to say the least
Review: Every time I read this book it's a terrible emotional experience for me. I could write about how I feel about this story until my fingers are weary. I will say only this.Familyfamilyfamily. Olympia's sense of responsibility to her family astounds me. Touches me. It's more beautiful than I can say. That sense she has that her family is the only thing that will stick by her and she will stick by. oh, it's wonderful. Normalcy. I feel normal. I am not. I even feel beautiful. Yet I am deformed. This book is the only place I have ever found any sense of understanding in that fact. Normal. is. a. feeling. just. like. beauty. The new thing I noticed this time through was Olympia's descriptions throughout. Always her heart. or stomach when it was bad. Her descriptions here wonderful. This is not a book I would recommend to just anyone. It's dark and strange and addresses topics best left unaddressed. But it is one of the books that defines me. If only for its depiction of freakdom. But also, I think, for its portrayal of family. I was a fool to think I could ever be with a norm. And yet, just like Iphy, that it what I want. Strange. This book is a part of me like very few others. And I will admit that even if it makes me seem crazy. I love, I love, I love.
Rating:
Summary: A Weird One
Review: This is not for everyone--it's strange and violent and perverse. If you can get to the other side, though, what a story!
Rating: 
Summary: Hooked but not happy
Review: It didn't take me long to get hooked into this book, but the entire time I was reading it I felt more like I was staring at a ghastly accident on the side of the road. There were a lot of characters that I loved to hate. I had a hard time liking anybody in this story. It was very sad and disturbing. I didn't get any insight from it and apperently I was suppose to. I don't think I would recommend this to anyone. I will say one good thing about it aside from not liking the story very much or the characters it was written very well and had a lot of imagination.
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Summary: Amazingly Original
Review: This book was like nothing I have ever read, although I can appreciate the comparisons to John Irving. This book was darker and gorier than an Irving novel, although the quirky character development is similar. I thoroughly enjoyed how the emotional aspects of these circus freak characters were developed and explored well enough to make one overlook their "mutant-ness," and read the story as a tale of morality involving average, boring people like those seen on the news each day. However, despite its ability to do that, Geek Love also took pains to emphasize the clearly unnatural (and supernatural) quality of its characters, especially in view of the pride the Binewski family took in its members' uniqueness. What an original idea, too! A family creates freaks for its circus sideshow by exposing its birthmother to carcinogens and teratogens, because it is too poor to obtain them through more conventional means of purchase or paying wages. The subplot (or "coplot", if you will) involves the main character's attempts to secretly preserve her daughter's uniqueness against a sadist who wishes to disfigure her for pleasure. Wow. This book could easily have lent itself to a commentary on racism, although I feel it resisted the urge, thus not muddying the storyline or coming across as too preachy in the process. The main character and storyteller Oly shared her thoughts about, and fears of, the norms, as well as her satisfaction at possessing features not shared by the norm community. Artie certainly exploited the norms, eliciting them to become as he was, in what became a bizarre and gruesome undercurrent within Geek Love; however, I viewed the description of his Arturism as more an editorial on religion (and blind adherence to all its ugly forms) than on cultural and racial differences. Geek Love's attention to detail was marvelous. By the time the characters reached their ultimate incarnations, you could see how they'd gotten there by reading about their past. Their development was logical, though not quite predictable. In particular, Arty's rise from jealous showboat to evil cult hero was exciting and well-advanced. My only problem with the book was the anger it elicited by never giving the bad guys their comeuppance, and by never rewarding the loyal family members (and saints, really) such as Oly and Chick.
Rating:
Summary: doesn't follow through
Review: The first chapter or so blew me away.. I was hooked, and I had to finish it, but I got madder as I did so. This book promises a great deal, without following through. Yes, it examines the question of who is normal and who isn't. But it fails to really face reality about this issue. The disabilities that produce disfigurements, like Siamese twinhood and having flippers instead of limbs, aren't a pain merely because society treats you as different: they can't be wished away just by growing up in a society that values them. I got tired of the nastiness, trashiness and sadism of many of the main characters in this novel. I liked Oly and Miranda and that was about it. But it was just too easy to be repulsed by many of the other people, disfigured and not, in the book. For example, from practically the start of it, I was waiting eagerly for Arty to die. By the time he did, I was downright impatient. Really good books leave me feeling transformed. This book, while it was technically very good and very gripping, just left me feeling kind of yucky. I can see where you might have your attitudes altered if you had never had to really deal with disability in your life. But I have, and I don't think this book helps matters.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully crazy novel!
Review: Although I came to this novel late,I can't say enough good things about it. This book is not like anything you have ever read. There is never a dull moment. You think you cannot be suprised again; then the author takes you to yet another outrageous situation. I'm thinking now of the followers of the boy with fins who decide to have their fingers and toes removed over a period of time in order to be more like him. Ms. Dunn is clearly an original. Certainly she hears a different drummer, or in this case a circus barker. I had almost decided that the book perhaps is just too grotesque. Then I turned on Larry King; he was doing a recapitulation of interviews with Jim and Tammy Fay Baker. Suddenly the characters in this novel didn't seem so strange after all. So art does mirror life. In this case it's the crazy circus mirror from the fun house.
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Summary: the ultimate freak romance
Review: My sister gave me this book saying "I can't believe you haven't read it, based on what my friends have said..." and I opened the package saying "Wow, I've heard about this, but just haven't gotten around to reading it, I've heard it's excellent..." I read this book the first time over a weekend, and have lovingly reread it many times since. This book is the penultimate freak show romance, mixed with a detective story, peppered with bizarre-o-rama. The perfect gift for that off-beat someone in the family. The story keeps slithering along, moving quickly and keeping you tightly in hand for the whole ride. Grab your popcorn... ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Heh heh heh
Review: Love this book! I read it years ago and continue to look for copies in the used book store as I pass it along to those that I meet that have the same sick puppy hidden shadow as I - heh heh. Be careful who you share your love for this outrageous story as they may hold it against you. Enjoy!!
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Summary: A Page Turner with a Brain
Review: I really loved this book! It tells the story of a carnival family headed by physically normal parents who hope to save their failing carnival by breeding their own sideshow. Their children are all the products of amature bio-engineering experiments. Even their failures are successes: the children who don't survive are displayed suspended in formaldahyde and the ones who do are circus performers. The renewed carnival is spectacularly successful. A dove-tailing storyline about a mystery millionaire heiress with an apparent fetish for body mutilation (others, not hers) adds titillation value. The characters and their actions are grotesque - but not because they're carnival freaks and geeks, rather because they are human. Lots to think about here: family dynamics, money, loyalty, greed, power, beauty and body image, religion, mental illness, medical ethics, and justice are all examined and often exposed in a different light.
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