Customer Reviews

Geek Love: A Novel

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

If you have a weak stomach, are christian, have children, like happy books, do not have a sense of humor, consider yourself politically correct...put down the book and run far, far away. However, if you consider freaky, disgusting, and/or disturbing things to be fun, by all means read this book. It's different, interesting, and downright just plain wrong. *I* loved it.

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."

I loved this book! The story was so strange but still somewhat believable... has real shock value. I find that the book is similar in style to Chuck Palanuik's book Invisible Monsters but far more interesting and believable. I agree with the other reviewer who thought that the books ending wasn't fully realized and a bit rushed. Still, this book had me captive, I recommend it!

This book is about Art and Lily Binewski, a couple who decide that through genetic experimentation they can create a family of circus freaks. There's Arturo the Aqua-Boy, born with flippers and later gathers a cult following; Electra and Iphigenia are Siamese twins; Olympia, an albino dwarf with a hump; and Chick, who appears to be a normal baby, a failure, until the day he is about to be abandoned when it's discovered he is telekinetic.

The story is told from Olympia's point of view and could almost be split into two novels - first is the history of the Binewski's Fabulon traveling circus, with much detail into their lives and the devotion the family has for each other.

Second is the story of a mother, Olympia, watching over a daughter that doesn't know her, a daughter born with a tail who meets up with a woman who wants to "fix" her by cutting off the tail. Sadly, this whole segment of the book feels thrown together. Not nearly as much detail was given and I didn't find myself really caring for these parts of the book at all.

What could have been a definite five star book gets knocked down to four stars for the above mentioned thrown in bits. Still, I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to read something far from ordinary.

"Geek Love" is truly unlike anything I've ever read, and that's a good thing. It's not necessarily pleasant -- no tidy endings or happily ever after here -- but it sure is fascinating. Once getting to know the book's characters, you start to forget they're "freaks" and just start looking at them as people, and that's a beatiful thing, even if most of the characters are pretty reprehensible in their actions.

Anyway, any time a book reviwer says a novel made them literally want to vomit, you know the book's author is doing something right.

KATHERINE DUNN'S NOVEL "GEEK LOVE" IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE EVER HAD THE PLEASEURE OF READING. AND IT STANDS THE TEST OF TIME. I READ IT FIRST BACK IN 1996 AND AGAIN IN 2004. IT WAS JUST AS WONDERFUL THE SECOND TIME AROUND, IF NOT MORE SO. I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN, LIKE A VOYEUR I WAS RIVETED TO THE SPOT, WATCHING THE BIZARRE PARADE OF CARNIVAL CHARACTERS MOVE BY IN THEIR OWN SECRET AND SAFE WORLD OF THE CARNIVAL MIDWAYS OF AMERICA, THEIR THOUGHTS ON EERILY "NORMAL" SUBJECTS, THEIR DESIRES TOO "HUMAN" TO BELIEVE.

"GEEK LOVE" IS A NOVEL FULL OF "SIDESHOW FREAKS." LIKE THE CARNIVAL-GOERS, WE WATCH THEM WITH BOTH FASCINATION AND FEAR. THE LOBSTER BOY, THE SIAMESE TWINS,THE ALBINO MIDGET (OUR NARRATOR), ETC. ALL SURPRISE US IN THEIR BIZARRENESS AS WELL AS IN THEIR "NORMALNESS." THEY DON'T LOOK LIKE US, BUT THEY ARE US. THEY WANT WHAT WE WANT. THEY FEEL WHAT WE FEEL. AND SOMEHOW THIS IS VERY MOVING. SOMEHOW, BY THE END OF THE BOOK, WE HAVE A BETTER SENSE OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN BEING.

I LOVE THIS BOOK AND WOULD RECOMMEND IT TO ANYBODY.

I thought that this was an awesome book, it went through every possible feeling that a human is capable of. It is very well written, crude at times, but all in all it is a full five stars. It is the only book that can come near any of Chuck Palahniuk's novels in ratings.

How far would you go to pursue a dream and how fair is it to drag your children with you? That is the basic, bottom line of this book. Parents deal with this all the time without even thinking about it.

Weird, yes. Disturbing, yes. But can you see beyond that? If you can, you will remember this book for the rest of your life.

I haven't actually finished this book, but this is my second attempt. My first, when I was 16, was shadowed by a sense of wrongness, as I'm sure many people have experienced. I still pale at some of the things that happen. But my cringe is the result, now, of the feelings of disgust that swim around this novel, not for the characters or what happens. To explain why, I took a class last semester about the history of carnival and sideshow and more importantly the people considered freakish enough to be a part of them. Instead of being turned off by the characters, bizarre as they may be, it is the reaction of the "norms" that make me want to cry. Hate is obvious in this book, and it is the hate which we should see in the words and learn from Dunn's writing that we do not want to be the ones to hate "others". Its a difficult book with a bold lesson for those ready to face it.