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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
This is one of the most disturbing books I've maybe ever tried to read
'My mother had been liberally dosed with cocaine, amphetamines, and arsenic during her ovulation and throughout her pregnancy with me. It was a disappointment when I emerged with such commonplace deformities.'
A cult classic set amidst a traveling carnival. Oly is a born and bred 'bald albino hunchback dwarf'. In this, she tells the unusual and often disturbing story of her unforgettable and proudly abnormal family. This doesn't read like horror (it felt like a John Irving), but if I described this book in detail, you'd be horrified. It's dark (and darkly funny) literary fiction with a cool element of magical realism.
'They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born'
A cult classic set amidst a traveling carnival. Oly is a born and bred 'bald albino hunchback dwarf'. In this, she tells the unusual and often disturbing story of her unforgettable and proudly abnormal family. This doesn't read like horror (it felt like a John Irving), but if I described this book in detail, you'd be horrified. It's dark (and darkly funny) literary fiction with a cool element of magical realism.
'They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born'
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "geek," I think about those guys that are good at computers, and some of them are incels,.. kind of nerdy. But these Geeks are the kind that bite off the heads of chickens and drink their blood, For the Love of the lawd.
It's about a family who has a traveling carnival. The father disdains fake freaks, and figures he'll just make his own real ones with his wife. So he makes her a list of ingredients to take while she's pregnant: methamphetamine, radioisotopes, arsenic, insecticide, and a few more nasty things.
The first couple of offspring have too many birth defects to survive. Arty, The third one is a flipper boy. He just has a torso, and then Flippers at his shoulders and hips. The next one is a dwarf with a hunchback, Olympia (Oly), the protagonist. Then there are a set of Siamese twins, Elektra and Ipephenia, who have a separate torso, arms and head but share hips and legs. And then there's the last boy, Chick: he's normal in appearances, but he is a telekinetic.
One of the attractions at the carnival is called The Chute: it's where all the birth defects who didn't survive are stored in giant jars.
"...looked like a lasagna pan full of exposed organs with a monkey head attached. The twins and I called Clifford "the Tray" when Mama wasn't around.
The Fist wasn't full term but it was obvious where the name had come from. "I only carried the Fist for five months," Lil said, and that was her excuse for spending a shade less time on his jar.
Apple and Leona were the two who had lived long enough to die outside Lily's belly. Apple was big but dull. She looked like a Tibetan cherub. Her coarse black hair grew close to her rumpled eyes. I myself could dimly remember her sleeping in the top drawer of Lil's big bureau. She never moved anything but her lips, her eyelids, and her bowels. Her eyeballs were still pointing in vaguely different directions. Lil had fed her from a bottle and changed her, washing her limp body three or four times a day. Lil would talk to Apple and rub her and move things in front of her eyes, but there was never any response. Apple grew fat and there was a smell of old urine around her and the drawer. She was two years old when she died. A pillow fell on her face.
Arty always claimed that Al did it. Elly and Iphy would squeal when he said that, and I would shake my head and change the subject, but we never asked Lil and we never brought it up in front of Al.
Leona was the last jar before the exit and had four spotlights focused to pierce the formaldehyde in which she drifted. Lil would linger over the jar and once or twice I saw her cry as she pressed her forehead against the glass and crooned. "We had such hopes for her," she would sigh. Leona's jar was labeled "The Lizard Girl" and she looked the part. Her head was long from front to back and the forehead was compressed and flattened over small features that collapsed into her long throat with no chin to disturb the line. She had a big fleshy tail, as thick as a leg where it sprouted from her spine, but then tapering to a point. There was a faint greenish sheen to her skin but I suspected that Arty was right in claiming that Al had painted it on after Leona died.
"She was only seven months old," Lil would murmur. "We never understood why she died."
The sign in the jar room was bolted to the wall and had its own spotlight. It was carefully calligraphed in brown letters on a cream back-ground. "HUMAN," it said. "BORN OF NORMAL PARENTS." "
"You must always remember that these are your brothers and sisters, Lil would lecture. "You must always take proper care of them and keep the roughnecks from jouncing the jars around on the road."
The twins and I were expected to share responsibility for the jars ... "
they shared the chores to clean The Chute and polish the jars clean.
"Chick," the telekinesist, can stop people's pain. He has the power to make changes in creatures' bodies. One of the carnies acquires a horse, a broken-down old thing with rotten feet. Chick works his power to take the pain away from the poor old thing while they do surgery on it; they remove its feet:
"... The twins, bug-eyed and wincing, crawled out of the dinette where we'd been finishing arithmetic lessons and waiting for breakfast. Mama forgot her biscuits and I trailed along. Papa and Horst laughed as we all trooped down along the hard clay track toward Dr. P.'s [a self-taught "surgeon" employed by the carnival]. Arty had a tape player in his wheelchair playing the taped bells loud. The show folk poked their heads out and strolled along, redheads and roustabouts. The flat grey of the day crept up our backs as we came to the shabby covered trailer parked near Dr. P's gleaming white mobile clinic.
Arty's chair stopped and Iphy's hand was caught tight in Arty's shoulder fin as Chick stepped forward. There was a rustle and bump from inside the trailer, and then the frost-coated, candy-orange horse stuck his head out the door and came prancing down the ramp to the ground with his mane braided in blue ribbons and his eyes rolling nervously as he arched his thin neck and crow-hopped in the dust. We all inhaled as we saw the long form of the horse, the Dachshorse, the chopped and channeled Basset Horse perched on starry stockings and realized that all four of the mush-boned feet were gone. The horse had been cut off just below the knees and was dancing his sprightly senile horse dance on stocking-covered, rubber-padded half-leg stumps.
"Ain't that something?!" Papa shouted. The redheads [all the women who worked in the carnival must have their hair dyed red] "wowed" softly and clapped, and Horst whistled a knife blast through his teeth that flattened the old horse's ears. Arty grinned and bowed in his chair, and Chick watched the old horse steadily. Dr. P. did not appear at all.
We all went close to look and pat the sweating, scared horse, and to examine the sock-covered stumps and admire how his tail was tied up in blue ribbon so it wouldn't drag in the dust. Chick stayed close, holding the halter rope. The twins stroked the quivering coat of the stunned old beast and glanced at each other as Arty told them that, though it was late, this was his birthday present to them.
"Thank you, Arty," they chorused. Papa was praising Dr P. And Mama set off running for the home van with a cry of "Biscuits!" and the group shifted and scattered.
Chick let the halter rope slide through his hands and the horse reached for a surviving clump of grey-green near the trailer wheel and bumped his jaw on the ground because he wasn't used to being so low down. Or that's what I thought."
The book alternates between the present time, when the protagonist is an adult around 40, and living in an apartment house that she owns, and back to the time of the carnival when she is young. In the apartment house, her mother, Lil, is the dementa-addled manager, who collects rents. Two floors up is her daughter, Miranda, a beautiful young woman who is completely normal except for a small tail. She works at an exotic dance club, where other women who have exceptional "talents," do a special Premium dance for customers.
She finds out that her daughter is going to have her tail cut off, and receive a huge amount of money from a woman named Miss Lick. She determines to stop Miss Lick. She follows her and finds out that she's a rich woman and that she swims at an athletic club. Oly joins, and observes:
"...she dresses after her swim, her hair is too soft to control and sticks up all over her head in rooster tails until she greases it and slicks it down. Her eyes are puffy every morning and she is fragile before she has her coffee at the office. She is honest. She wants to do good. All her efforts are toward good.
Miss Lick's purpose is to liberate women who are liable to be exploited by male hungers. These exploitable women are, in Miss Lick's view, the pretty ones. She feels great pity for them. Linda's transformation gave her the idea. If all these pretty women could shed the traits that made men want them (their prettiness) then they would no longer depend on their own exploitability but would use their talents and intelligence to become powerful. Miss Lick has great faith in the truth of this theory. She herself is an example of what can be accomplished by one unencumbered by natural beauty. So am I.
"You are so lucky," she said that night. "What fools might consider a handicap is actually an enormous gift. What you've accomplished with your voice might never have been possible if you'd been normal. [Oly has a trained voice and performs readingsat a radio station.]"
Miss Lick, like many otherwise sophisticated people, is unduly impressed by anything connected with mass media. She believes my radio programs are major artistic achievements. She is sure I am a great success.
Miss Lick has already liberated a number of young women. She never uses force or coercion. She uses money. Carina was the first and gave her the most trouble. She waited until Carina had her degree and was settled in her job before she tried again.
"I had to be sure I was right. It's not something you can do carelessly." Carina has never yet told Miss Lick that it was "the best thing that ever happened" to her.
"I admit that still bothers me," says Miss Lick, her forehead rumpled with worry. "But others have said it. Lots of times. Carina's stubborn. Damned stubborn."
After Carina, Miss Lick was tentative, cautious for a while. "I stuck with thyroid treatments for the next three. I was nervous about a more drastic approach."
The disks flickered over a secretary, a high school hurdles runner, a young prostitute-and then their incredible incarnations. All three so fat they could barely move.
"Lulu, the ex-hooker, is my office manager."...
Back to the past, and the twins, at the age of 19, have had unwilling sex with a man who, years ago tried to shoot the children, and failed, and has a long convoluted past ending with him having his face ruined when he tried to suicide, and has to wear a cloth over it.
Arty is possessive of the twins, and with their New-found menstruation womanhood, they want to have sex. he doesn't want them mating with men. He gives them to the man who's survived his suicide.
He puts the man watching their door as a bodyguard. One day the twins set up to have a man come to their trailer, but he interferes, and begs them to let him "take care of them." When he barges into their trailer and begins to rape them, Mama has suddenly remembered where she saw him before, hears the noise and brings her gun and tries to shoot him.
"...in the heart, but it was an awkward angle with him on top of the girls, naked below and his shirt unbuttoned so it flopped and I couldn't tell where to aim, exactly. I had to shoot from the side or risk the bullet piercing him and going on to injure the twins. Al always loaded a soft slug, though, for stopping power. Al was right as usual."
Papa hunched over his hands as though his chest was ready to explode. "Son, Arty, did you know that this was the guy who tried to kill you all? Did you know this was the guy from Coos Bay?"
Arty, grey-faced even under the warm gold light of his reading lamp, shook his head. "Of course not, Papa. We're very lucky Mama remenbered him."
"Sweet, frosted globes of the virgin," breathed Al. "Imagine him haunting us all these years. I'll go batso thinking. All that time. All those chances. Me and my half-assed security."
Arty leaned against his chair arm, head drooping in fatigue.
"Well, Mama was just in time."
Elly's face, twisted by revulsion: "But she wasn't in time! He came when she pulled the trigger. He spurted like a cockroach oozing eggs as it dies!"
Iphy, calmly: "Normally we use a spermicide in our diaphragm, but we weren't ready for him and he wouldn't let us put it in."
They become pregnant and have a horribly birth-defected baby:
"...Eleven days later the twins gave birth to Mumpo. It was a long labor, twenty-six hours, and a difficult delivery. Chick did a lot but Mama and Papa helped. I wasn't allowed in the van. I sat with Arty all night and most of the day. He was sick with fear. I was sick myself. The Arturans [Arty's fans] buzzing on the intercom constantly. I took messages and shunted them off. Miz Z. [another fan. They cut off appendages to show their love] in her proud bandage (one little toe's worth) appeared at the door twice with a sheaf of papers, but I shooed her away. Arty wouldn't eat. He insisted on playing checkers, hour after hour, game after game. He beat me fifty times and he would have gone on forever except that I accidentally won a game and he threw the board off the desk in a fury. He rolled off to his bedroom and locked himself in.
When Papa finally came to the door with the news, Arty wheeled out of his room to hear. A boy. Twenty-six pounds, five ounces. The mothers were doing fine.
Papa looked young again, leaning in the doorway to shout the news; his mustache bristled with power and pride, which, he used to say, "are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark."
"Twenty-six pounds?"
"Thought it was twins, did you?" He chortled. "Fat little! A natural! Twenty handsome inches long and twenty-six of the babiest pounds! What do you think, uncle? Cheeks like a politician! Ten chins right out of the oven! That Iphy! Took one look and says, 'Mumpo.' His name, see? Lily went to lay him on Iphy's breast and she like to die! Couldn't breathe, he's so heavy. Got to tell Horst [the manager] ; he's been sucking the bottle for two days worrying!" Then a sudden change, a confidentiality, a secret wondering, near whisper as he put one foot inside to keep it among us. "That Chick, Great Christo, he's good. I would have popped it with a knife myself after so long. I was scared to death with the kid so big. Not Chick. He pumped in air somehow, don't ask me. That baby breathing easy for hours and still inside. That Chick, sweet lollyballs of the prophet!" And he was gone, thumping down the ramp, hailing people in the line, hollering, "A boy... Fine... All fine. A boy! Yes! By the bouncing melons of Mary! I'm a grandpa!"
Arty sat petrified in his chair, staring through the open door. Miz Z. appeared, heading for us, a clipboard in hand.
"Scare her off," said Arty. He looked deflated and a little damp. “Then go get the baby, will you?"
"What for?" I felt a fist of fear in my gut...."
Now Oly is at the age when she can have babies, and she wants one of her own. But she doesn't want just any old man's baby; she's always been in love with her brother arthur. Of course she knows she doesn't want to have "sex" with him. Everybody thinks she's in love with the pin cushion man.....
"...I was impatient with him. "How do I know? I thought you could do anything."It was one thing to be eleven years old when you were memorizing geography, but this was supposed to be the region of his gift, the terrain of his purpose.
"Well, I mainly take things apart. I can take anything apart," he said. An amazed wideness settled on his eyes as he stared blankly at the door of the laundry truck.
Watching his possibilities dawn on Chick, I decided to ask the question that I'd been carrying for weeks. Ever since I'd realized how limited my own possibilities were.
"Chicky, listen. Remember how you used to pick pockets? Well, you know the sperm in Arty's balls?" I had his attention at least. "Could you move that sperm-the wiggly little things-could you move them into me and get 'em into the egg thing in me so I could have a baby like Iphy?"
That, Miranda, was how I came to ask. Chick was hesitant, scared at first He was afraid of botching the job. He insisted on trying it out on the cats first.
The next week he managed to impregnate an elderly and irritable tigress whom Horst had never successfully mated. She had such a nasty attitude that she sliced up any male who propositioned her. Chick accomplished the miracle of Lilith, the tigress, early one morning while sitting on an overturned bucket in front of the cat wagon. I paced and fidgeted, trady to warn him if any of the Arturans should come along to distract him. He took what seemed like a long time. His hands clenched in a knot at his knees, his face flushed and beaded with sweat.
The male, at one end of the row of cages, slept through the process. Lilith, who had been named after Mama, paced and coughed and glared and switched her tail at the other end.
There was nothing to see. I was getting bored when he finally let out a long, cautious breath and looked at me. He rubbed his eyes with his fists. "Wow," he said, "I think it worked."
I went hopping and celebrating around, patting him on the shoulders and rumpling his hair. I was as happy as if it were my own stunt he'd just pulled.
Chick agreed to be ready to do it whenever my time came around if he could be sure of having both Arty and me still and in the same room, preferably for some time.
"Maybe I could do it without seeing you both, but something might go wrong. It's tricky."
This is how Mathilda is conceived.
Things begin to go wrong, because Arty already hates mumpo. He sets it up so that Mumpo is killed. After this, chicky hates arty, because chicky had loved Mumpo. It affects him so much that he goes crazy and sets the carnival on fire.
"The white rocking air hit us before the sound. I heard nothing, but raised my hands against the rushing air, and the fire came, toppling toward us in falling blocks like the wave in a child's dream, huge, though the torches were booths and tents no taller than a man could touch with his hand. It came billowing, scorching toward us, and the Chick, in his pain, could not hold himself but reached.
I felt him rush through me like a current of love to my cross points, and then draw back. I, with my arms lifted felt his eyes open into me, and felt their blue flicker of recognition. Then he drew back. He pulled out of my separate self and was gone. He turned away, and the fire came. The flames spouted from him-pale as light-bursting outward from his belly. He did not scream or move but he spread, and my world exploded with him, and I, watching, bit down-bit down and knew it-bit down with a sense of enormous relief, and ground my teeth to powdered shards and stood singed and grinding at the stumps as they died-my roses-Arty and Al and Chick and the twins-gone dustward as the coals rid themselves of that terrible heat.
Many died. Many burned. Babes snuffed to grease smears in the blackened arms of their charcoaled mothers. Sudden switches, lean and brittle, had started as dancing children only seconds before. All the dark, gaping corpses, in their fire-frenzy ballet, flexed and tangled in the dreams of the finders. The firefighters and ambulance shriekers who had worked arson-struck tenements and the crashes of jumbo jets puked and retreated, or quit their jobs to grow lettuce, but still dreamed, after wading the ashes of Binewski's Carnival Fabulon.
For me there were only Arty and Al and Chick and the twins snatched into nothing and I with them-grinding, for relief, my teeth into powder.
The cats were lost but Horst made it. He took care of business while I was in the hospital. He brought me the papers to sign but he made the decisions. I didn't object.....Horst was the one who identified Arty's boiled body, no longer beautiful, in the dark char left when the big tank vaporized. He gathered the torn, soggy jar kin from the remnants of their shattered jugs and ushered them, with the rest of the Binewski dead, through what he called "decent" cremation. The family living vans weren't touched by the firestorm. ..
Oly takes care of Miss Lick, and in the process "takes care" of herself. She leaves a trunk with all the history of the binewsky family, and all the money, left for her daughter Miranda.
Though hideous in many ways, this story was absorbing.
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
took me nearly a whole month to read mainly because I moved house but also because this story sort of took over my whole life, the characters and the story never left my brain. I’ve never been so enjoyably confused at something in my whole life, and never have I read something so disgustingly beautiful. This book has crawled under my skin and it will probably stay there forever. I love you Geek Love
What a strange, sad, and disturbing story. I really enjoyed it but I can see that a lot of people might not.
dark
funny
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced