About this title: The story, lurid, lyrical, half-mad, of Mister Binewski, Crystal Lil and their bizarre offspring, a home-bred freakshow: Arturo the flipper boy, Siamese twins, the dwarf Albino and Fortunato the boy with psychokinetic power. A very strange parable of family happiness.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges. read more
Description: Fair. Dust Cover Missing. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Octavo, softcover, VG in green pictorial wraps. 355 pp. beginning to tan. A National Book Award finalist--it is a disturbing fantasy novel about a freak show family, the Binewskis which examines the inner torments of human oddities. 355 pages. read more
Edition: Later Printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Warner Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780446391306ISBN:0446391301
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. This is Dunn's third novel and the first to appear in almost two decades. It was a National Book Award finalist. It is a disturbing fantasy novel about a freak show family, the Binewskis; it examines the inner torments of human oddities. 355 pages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This copy is in very good condition. The binding is solid, and there are no reading creases in the spine. The cover shows some mild ... read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Warner Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780446391306ISBN:0446391301
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Slight spine read curve, binding tight, no reader/remainder/library marks, mild age toning pg edges, covers/pgs flat w/slight corner curl/crease, mild shelf wear. 355 numbered pgs., Audience: General/trade. Photos or other information available by e-mail. Daily orders/e-mail responses. E-mail confirmation of shipment. Check our feedback. read more
Edition: Sixth Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Warner Books Inc, New York
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780446391306ISBN:0446391301
Description: Good. No Jacket. Fiction. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Nominated for the National Book Award. This is a fantastic story! Very thoughtful and very timely. A circus family is trying to keep their circus from bankruptcy. Mother Binewskis ingests drugs, insecticides, arsenic, radioisotopes, anything to make her babies more special! And speical they are! Find out what happens! This book is in good shape. There is the usual minor scuffing along the edges. The spine is not creased. read more
Description: Fine. 0446391301 Old price penciled to fly leaf and 2 bumped corners. Absolutely no other markings to textblock, page ends or inside cover. Cover excellent except for bumps mentioned. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage, New York
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780375713347ISBN:0375713344
Description: Good with no dust jacket. 0375713344. Softbound, light wear/soil, crease at spine/lower front corner, spot stain on last pg/inside rear cover, pgs clean/white; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 348 pages. read more
Any book that was written in the early '80's and is still worth reading today, is almost by definition, a semi-classic; though cult-horror classic might be closer to the mark for Geek Love. That's right: this is not your run-of-the-mill beach novel. I will not be placing this book on my list of Best Ten Novels of the 20th Century; but I'm sure there are others who will, and I have no basic argument with them. Geek Love is bizarre, but only on the surface. Fundamentally, this is a solid, serious, brilliant, and beautifully written story. I didn't "get" that when I first began reading. At first, I thought this book was weird, horrifying, shocking and sometimes sickening. But I recognized and appreciated Katherine Dunn's excellent writing, and as an admirer of good literature, I kept reading.
I found the first few chapters confusing, mainly because they weren't arranged chronologically. Dunn did this to set the novel up to follow two storylines: the one that Olympia (Oly), our bald-albino-hunchbacked-dwarf (!) narrator tells during her childhood and adolescence with the carnival; and the present-day story of Oly as an adult, living in a the same boarding house as her mother and her daughter Miranda, neither of whom knows who Oly is. There's also a star role here for Miss Lick, a wealthy older woman who pays beautiful women to have themselves disfigured.
In the main narrative (where the best writing happens) when "Carnival Fabulon" is threatened with bankruptcy, Oly's parents, Al Binewski and Chrystal Lil, decide to purposely breed defective children by feeding Lil drugs and radioisotopes in order to "give their children the gift of making money just by being themselves." The babies that don't survive are preserved in jars for public viewing. {No offence taken, those of you who choose to leave this review now.} Firstborn Arty is followed by Siamese twins Electra (Elly) and Iphigenia (Iphy); next is Oly, then Chick (Fortunato, because his parents thought he was a "norm" until they learned he is telekinetic).
Oly is our narrator; not deformed enough to perform, she is reduced to the role of a servant to her family. It is her brother Arturo (Arty, Aqua Boy) born with flippers attached to his torso who is really at the centre of the story. Oly loves and hates Arty, while she waits on him "hands and feet". At seventeen years of age, she has a child, Miranda, by Arty, via Chick, with his telekinetic powers. {Pause, while this sinks in.} This compensates for Oly's feelings of isolation from the rest of the family - but not for long. It is for Miranda that Oly tells this tale.
Eventually Arty not only controls the whole show and his family; he forms a cult around himself. The "norms" form the cult of self-mutilation and butchery, calling themselves Arturans, with the help of a mysterious Dr. Phyllis. {Note that Dunn is writing this at about the same time that Irving is salting Garp with Ellen Jamesians; something in the water?}
And thus, while what Dunn has created in this multilayered story is admittedly absurd, those of us who chose not to throw this book into the garbage halfway through reading, realize that Dunn wrote to challenge her readers' opinions about society. What is normal; what is bizarre? How do we perceive and "rate" ourselves compared to others? What do we view as perfection; what do we regard as deformity? What is beneath the surface of people; what is their real reality?
And perhaps most important of all, what is that sickness in our society that allows us to connect - even tenuously - with the particular set of absurdities we find in Geek Love."
"I had been waiting to read this book for years. A friend of mine loves it and had recommended it several times.
I thought it started out great. A family of carnies expands by experimenting on their offspring to produce "oddities" that can be marketed in the carnival. These kids grow up with individual abnormalities that define their personalities. The oldest, Arturo, turns sadistic and starts a cult that quickly gains hundreds of followers.
The story is told from the point of view of one of his younger sisters, Oly, who is an albino hunchback. She worships him as much as his cult members, but regrets it later in life.
The story is entertaining and well written, but horribly twisted and at some points disgusting. In the end I'm not sure if I enjoyed it as a book or not. It really examines the generational perpetuation that emotional abuse follows, and how isolated people can't see that what they are experiencing is neither necessary or normal."
""Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books." - Jack Handey
This is one of the only books I plan never to finish. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I don't even know that I would say it was badly edited (a comment I read in another review), but I hated all of the characters. I loathed them by the time I stopped reading. I even hated Chick a little bit. I skipped some and glanced at the end to see if it would be worth finishing, but I couldn't get too excited about anything I saw. If anyone has a good reason for me to finish this book, I would be interested to hear it.
I was recommended to read it by two very different people - the prom queen my Senior year of high school, and a friend of mine who was later locked up in a high security mental ward in Seattle. Made me want to give it a try, you know? I don't know if I've ever hated so many characters in a book as though they were my personal enemies.
This book sat inside my nightstand for a couple of months, and then I just couldn't stand having it there any more, knowing it might be sneaking out and watching me while I slept. I took it to the library and handed it to one of the customer service people, asking him if I could give it to the library. I didn't want to sell it to a used book store and then have someone make the mistake I made of actually spending money on it; and I couldn't throw it away because I do think it's well written, so I had to give it more respect than that. The man tried to scan it for about thirty seconds as though I was returning it. "No," I explained, "I'm not returning it. I just want to give it to the library, if that's okay." "Oh," he said, looking at his computer screen and not giving any other response. I walked away quickly, just in case he was planning to tell me I couldn't leave the book. He's the librarian here at the Eugene Public library with the handlebar mustache, and the greying hair with a bowl cut, who looks like he's part basset hound. That's a pretty irrelevant story, but why are you still reading this? (that's what Katherine Dunn said)"
"This was an interesting read and the fact that I'm still thinking about the book weeks later means I'll go out and read more of Dunn's work. However, I have to cap things at "I liked it" and save the "really" for another time.
Dunn's novel presents like a sick & twisted Jane Austen, touching on themes ranging from familial relations to the nature of beauty to human (and inhumane) nature. She engages the reader in multiple storylines over two time frames (past and present), each of which is fascinating. However, the reader would have been better served had Dunn selected one, perhaps two, as the point of focus. The multiple story lines end up diluting the impact of the novel both through too much shock value and too many characters and themes to track. At one point later in the novel the narrative effectively shifts from the first person perspective of our (anti?)heroine Oly to the field notes of an investigative reporter. The shift further dilutes the novel's power by distancing the reader from the emotive impact of Oly's raw experience and replacing it with a series of clinical observations.
Despite the unfortunate choice of alternating between giving the reader too much and too little, I'd recommend giving Geek Love a read. I give Dunn full marks for some unexpected plot twists toward the end - any author that magages to catch me with one of those guarantees I'll read more of her work."
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