Geek Love
Katherine Dunn
A National Book Award Finalist: This 'wonderfully descriptive' novel from an author with a 'tremendous imagination' tells the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias have bred their own exhibit of human oddities. (The New York Times Book Review)
The Binewskis arex a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan, Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins, albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious - and dangerous - asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the US, inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene.
Family values will never be the same.
Praise for Geek Love
'If Flannery O'Connor had consumed vast quantities of LSD, she might have written like this' Literary Review
'The most romantic novel about love and family I have read. It made me ashamed to be so utterly normal' Terry Gilliam
'I felt electrocuted when I read that first page with Crystal Lil and her freak brood. I stood there in the bookstore and my jaw came unhinged. No book I've read, before or since, has given me that specific jolt' Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia
Product Details
About Katherine Dunn
Reviews for Geek Love
Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia
The most romantic novel about love and family I have read. It made me ashamed to be so utterly normal
Terry Gilliam Riveting and extremely well-crafted. There's a real philosophy behind it where it actually touches on the profound.
Margaret Forster
If Flannery O'Connor had consumed vast quantities of LSD, she might have written like this
Literary Review
A Fellini movie in ink...Geek Love throws a punch
San Francisco Chronicle
Like most great novels, this one keeps the reader marveling at the daring of the author
Philadelphia Inquirer
Unrelentingly bizarre . . .perverse but riveting . . . Will keep you turning the pages
Chicago Tribune
This audacious, mesmerizing novel should carry a warning: ``Reader Beware.'' Those entering the world of carnival freaks described by narrator Olympia Binewski, a bald, humpbacked albino dwarf, will find no escape from a story at once engrossing and repellent, funny and terrifying, unreal and true to human nature. Dunn's vivid, energetic prose, her soaring imagination and assured narrative skill fuse to produce an unforgettable tale
Publishers Weekly
If Flannery O'Connor has consumed vast quantities of LSD, she might have written like this.
LITERARY REVIEW
A book of bizarre and brutal beauty, guaranteed to wring from you horror and heartbreak by turns...
COMPANY
Riveting and extremely well-crafted. There's a real philosophy behind it where it actually touches on the profound.
MARGARET FORSTER
A novel that everyone will be talking about, a brilliant, suspenseful, heartbreaking tour de force.
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY