Geek Love

A Novel

by Katherine Dunn

348 pages

English language

Published 2002 by Vintage Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-375-71334-7
OCLC Number:: 50590962
Goodreads:: 13872

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

(31 reviews)

National Book Award Finalist - Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities--with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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 U.S., 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 …

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

3 editions

73pctGeek reviewed Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Strange and interesting

3 stars

A book about the chicken-biting type of Geek Love. An engineered "freak", the hunchbacked dwarf protagonist Oly, tells the story of her childhood and teen years living deeply enmeshed with her family in a travelling carnival, interspersed with chapters of her life at 38.

It's a strange but interesting read for the most part, though at times, horrifying. The first third grabbed me, but later in the book my attention waned at times and I found the ending a little unsatisfactory. I'm not sure I like it very much.

billy reviewed Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Review of 'Geek love' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

a disgusting and depraved work, plainly the product of a diseased mind. I love it

Jamie reviewed Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Review of 'Geek love' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

There's so much in this book that would normally lead me to deduct magical internet star points - some graphic bits I usually think of as pandering and unnecessary - but there is also more to this than I normally get in a novel. It's excellently plotted and paced, the characters are really rich and changeable, the world and its happenings are unlike any other I've read.

gimley reviewed Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Review of 'Geek love' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

People love this book and though I'm not one of them, it's obvious why. There's a uniqueness to it. It's not, as they would say in the text, a "norm," short for normal. Any book could have businessmen, narcissists, sexual explorers, murderers, journalists & crazy people (and this book has all of those.) Any book can be about families, cults, tragedies, coming of age (and this book is.) Any book can have an unreliable narrator (like this one.) But this one's narrator is a bald hunchbacked albino dwarf. This cult is about amputation and lobotomy. This is the story of a family of freaks. And so on. And the writing is good too--go read the quotes section if you doubt me.

So why don't I love it? Because once you take on the characters and situations this book does, you're under a lot of obligation to make good use of it. And that is how this book ultimately fails. Not completely. But often enough. And the ending most of all. Should I spoiler it? Let me just say that it was worse than norm. It was subnorm. Tacked on to make a point. Insufficently motivated by the characters (the author should have at least tried harder because it could have worked at that level at least) and cutting short the developing relationship before it could get interesting in the easiest way possible.