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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this for book club, and it was not something I would normally have read, for a few different reasons. Al runs a carnival with his wife Lily, and deliberately seeks to induce birth defects in their children to make them suitable for the freak show. Arty is born with flippers in place of limbs, Oly is an albino dwarf with a hunchback, Iphy and Elly are conjoined twins, while Chick is different in ways that aren't immediately visible. A heart-wrenching tale of extreme family dysfunction, searing and often quite difficult to stomach, at least for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m not sure what to rate this. It’s experimental, for sure. I can’t say I’d recommend it based on how… disturbing it is. But perhaps art is meant to disturb.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Incest, Physical abuse
The lack of editing in this book is super distracting. There are so many mistakes it's quite ridiculous.
The storyline has potential which it unfortunately never reaches.
Her similes are amazing though, really funny.
The storyline has potential which it unfortunately never reaches.
Her similes are amazing though, really funny.
DNF at pg 80. Felt more like short stories about this family than a novel :-/ could use some editing
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
For a long time I saw this book on the shelves of bookstores and instantly wrote it off as some kind of nerdy romance story between lab partners or cubicle mates. Then, briefly, in some Internet discussion, someone mentioned Geek Love as being hard to stomach. That was all it took for me to know I'd been imagining the wrong book.
So I got a copy and was instantly enamored by it. Nightmare Alley is one of my favorites and Something Wicked This Way Comes changed me as a kid; so meeting the Binewskis and becoming acquainted with their exquisite entourage felt familiar and intriguing at once. I was back at the carnival, but this time it felt like I lived there.
Dunn wastes no time bringing us into Olympia's life and the perverse wonder of Geek Love; accounts of a geek show and a visit to the Glass House (in the first 20 pages no less) let readers know just how dirty one gets inching along the grease and the grime of the midway.
To me, Dunn crafts a masterpiece. What is deformity? What is love? What is family? Every characters hurts or gets hurt, and in spite of every detail that marks this tale as outrageous, so much of it is so universal.
So I got a copy and was instantly enamored by it. Nightmare Alley is one of my favorites and Something Wicked This Way Comes changed me as a kid; so meeting the Binewskis and becoming acquainted with their exquisite entourage felt familiar and intriguing at once. I was back at the carnival, but this time it felt like I lived there.
Dunn wastes no time bringing us into Olympia's life and the perverse wonder of Geek Love; accounts of a geek show and a visit to the Glass House (in the first 20 pages no less) let readers know just how dirty one gets inching along the grease and the grime of the midway.
To me, Dunn crafts a masterpiece. What is deformity? What is love? What is family? Every characters hurts or gets hurt, and in spite of every detail that marks this tale as outrageous, so much of it is so universal.
adventurous
challenging
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
2.5– No matter how messed up you find it to be, Geek Love is undeniably one of the most creative, unrestrained, and memorable pieces of art of all time. It is mind boggling to think about how such a deranged story could have developed in Dunn’s mind— and yes, its contents are horrific, but by no means “horror”, as the genre tags might suggest. What the book actually is is dark, shocking, and sickeningly off-the-wall.
This has been on my “to-read” list for YEARS, and I’m so glad I finally read it! Equal parts beautiful and disturbing, the story straddles two eras — the time when the Binewski family’s carnival still operated, and the later years when our narrator, Olympia Binewski, lives in Portland, OR, and stalks the perimeter of her daughter’s life.
A novel centered around a family of circus freaks could easily fall into mere body horror, but through the narrative voice of hunchbacked albino dwarf Olympia, we experience a far more interesting perspective on the subject. Freakishness as a source of pride, as an aspiration, and as a fierce resistance to the values of the “norms,” as they call other non-freaks, are all explored. The cult of personality built by Arturo the Aqua Boy and the secretive dealings of Mary Lick demonstrate the allure of becoming “one of us,” to quote Todd Browning.
As someone who has become more freakish (transsexual) over the past years, the nuanced manner in which Geek Love approaches attitudes about the visibly other really resonated. People stare; they also give more deference to my words when they listen to what I have to say. There’s an ever-present threat of potential violence, and yet, there is power too. Whether we’re huffing cave fumes for visions in the ancient world or answering questions for our curious colleagues, the song remains the same.
Beautiful, horrifying, and highly recommended!
A novel centered around a family of circus freaks could easily fall into mere body horror, but through the narrative voice of hunchbacked albino dwarf Olympia, we experience a far more interesting perspective on the subject. Freakishness as a source of pride, as an aspiration, and as a fierce resistance to the values of the “norms,” as they call other non-freaks, are all explored. The cult of personality built by Arturo the Aqua Boy and the secretive dealings of Mary Lick demonstrate the allure of becoming “one of us,” to quote Todd Browning.
As someone who has become more freakish (transsexual) over the past years, the nuanced manner in which Geek Love approaches attitudes about the visibly other really resonated. People stare; they also give more deference to my words when they listen to what I have to say. There’s an ever-present threat of potential violence, and yet, there is power too. Whether we’re huffing cave fumes for visions in the ancient world or answering questions for our curious colleagues, the song remains the same.
Beautiful, horrifying, and highly recommended!
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
now what the hell did i just read. really good. sad. very sad