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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
3.5 - an interesting plot, great characters, memorable moments, I just wish the writing had been tighter. This would be a great book to pull you out of a reading funk.
Like many others, I’m left with mixed emotions. Definitely one of those books that sticks with you even though I don’t think I’d read it a second time.
The core of the story is a riff off the classic traveling circus family deal but wayyyy more unethical. At times the plot was completely grotesque and revolting. Other times, I felt connected to the characters and sympathized with their circumstances. Many parts of most of the characters aren’t redeeming but they were interesting and that’s enough for me. The family dynamic is incredibly frustrating, sad, and creepy.
This entire book is basically a trigger warning so not something you’ll want to read (in my opinion) if you’re feeling down. But I will say I was intrigued and engaged the entire book. Even though it’s not a short read it felt like it ended abruptly to me.
The core of the story is a riff off the classic traveling circus family deal but wayyyy more unethical. At times the plot was completely grotesque and revolting. Other times, I felt connected to the characters and sympathized with their circumstances. Many parts of most of the characters aren’t redeeming but they were interesting and that’s enough for me. The family dynamic is incredibly frustrating, sad, and creepy.
This entire book is basically a trigger warning so not something you’ll want to read (in my opinion) if you’re feeling down. But I will say I was intrigued and engaged the entire book. Even though it’s not a short read it felt like it ended abruptly to me.
This was just not for me.
Put aside the maniacal tyrant, the incest, rape, torture, harassment and manipulation, and you’ve still got roughly 3 plots, loosely strung together. The mid-book addition of journals and newspaper clippings was actually helpful to understanding some of the larger ideas but added a layer of confusion when it came to the flow of the sub plots.
I know a lot of folks loved it, I suspect that may also be folks who enjoy the shock value of some of these scenarios. That’s not me.
I will say, that it affected me greatly. I lost sleep over some of the images and have found myself thinking about certain situations through the day. I’ve been uncomfortable in my own skin for weeks over it, so if that’s your thing, you’ll LOVE this book. No all authors can evoke feelings of any kind in a reader, so there’s that.
Put aside the maniacal tyrant, the incest, rape, torture, harassment and manipulation, and you’ve still got roughly 3 plots, loosely strung together. The mid-book addition of journals and newspaper clippings was actually helpful to understanding some of the larger ideas but added a layer of confusion when it came to the flow of the sub plots.
I know a lot of folks loved it, I suspect that may also be folks who enjoy the shock value of some of these scenarios. That’s not me.
I will say, that it affected me greatly. I lost sleep over some of the images and have found myself thinking about certain situations through the day. I’ve been uncomfortable in my own skin for weeks over it, so if that’s your thing, you’ll LOVE this book. No all authors can evoke feelings of any kind in a reader, so there’s that.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I can't decide whether to give this 4 or 5 stars. I loved it, I hated it. I loved it. Thought-provoking, distribute and touching all at once.
Wow. I would not have picked this for myself, it was a gift. I started reading Geek Love out of obligation and by the 5th chapter I was hooked and really enjoyed the book thereafter (it just took me that long to get to know each of the main characters, who then remained consistent throughout).
Incredibly inventive, unflinching, with empathy, and with strong writing. I can see why it's become a cult classic.
Incredibly inventive, unflinching, with empathy, and with strong writing. I can see why it's become a cult classic.
Katherine Dunn's 'Geek Love' is one of those books that Jared recommended. That meant two things: one, that it was very good; two, that it was effed up in some way. I knew that going in.
Being effed up is this book's siren and lotus. You come for the circus and you stay because you can't really leave it. Which means that it was a sort of brilliant conceptual trap on the part of the author, but also that it was a certain volume of maddening torture.
What starts out as an affected love-and-family story ends as a thoroughly effed up love-and-family story, the second iteration of which term means a little more than the first. The Binewskis are the oligarchy of a carnival, or 'fabulon' as it were. Not only did they make the carnival; they are the carnival. Mama and Papa Binewski bred each of their children to be genetic freaks. This is cute at first: the variety, the mottled and bottled psychology of children growing up in a traveling circus. And then, through Olympia's narration you begin to see that they are not just freaks on the outside.
The story is spun out of the family dynamic. Who hates whom, who loves whom, so forth. When written right, a story such as this about a normal family can be engaging; family is a strange concept in our culture, in that we wind up stuck with them both during and after our time in their actual proximity. What makes 'Geek Love' so engaging is the settings, the species, the raised bar of human decency granted to those ostracized from civilization in that particular way--granted to those seeking and taking freedom. And it is the story itself that is worth the read, and upon which my entire rating hangs.
What fought me the entire way through seems to be what most people have praised both when they have loved and hated the story: the writing. It's lyrical, strong. However I couldn't help but blanche at the imagined presence of Katherine Dunn smoking a cigarette, barely acknowledging my existence, and trying her Portlandy darnedest to alienate me with linguistic peculiarites. I know how much writers want to pen that golden sentence, that one that has never been written before and will never be written again. It seemed, though, that Dunn wanted to do this with every sentence of the novel, and at times I found it a little tiresome. Rarely, even, some of her terminologies made no sense at all.
Take this for exempli gratia: 'The pencil rocked steadily like a metronome, broke rhythm for a tiny jig, and then lapsed into a four-four waltz.' Kate, dear, honey? Waltzes don't come in four-four time. A waltz, almost by definition is in three-four--or at least in an odd time, like five-four. And I bow to the fact that this is a little detail, as is the term, 'flame-purple,' (because when I see certain shades of purple, one of the first things I compare it to is fire...) but the small number of these betray a hypothesis that Dunn was perhaps, at times, reaching.
Again, however, this may have been a conceptual choice. I haven't read anything else by Dunn yet, so I have no basis for that. But her view of the Binewski Fabulon is that its entire appeal within the world of the book is that it is so ugly and jarring that you can't look away. You want more of it. You give yourself to it. And in a way, the language used in the book matches that description. Because, well, despite my gripes, I admit and profess that I didn't skip one effing word of this book. It was a torture I wanted to imbibe.
And, lastly, it seemed to end its chapters and sections at really weird moments, almost as if it deliberately wanted you to come up with the ending all on your own. But I'll get to that in a second.
Being effed up is this book's siren and lotus. You come for the circus and you stay because you can't really leave it. Which means that it was a sort of brilliant conceptual trap on the part of the author, but also that it was a certain volume of maddening torture.
What starts out as an affected love-and-family story ends as a thoroughly effed up love-and-family story, the second iteration of which term means a little more than the first. The Binewskis are the oligarchy of a carnival, or 'fabulon' as it were. Not only did they make the carnival; they are the carnival. Mama and Papa Binewski bred each of their children to be genetic freaks. This is cute at first: the variety, the mottled and bottled psychology of children growing up in a traveling circus. And then, through Olympia's narration you begin to see that they are not just freaks on the outside.
The story is spun out of the family dynamic. Who hates whom, who loves whom, so forth. When written right, a story such as this about a normal family can be engaging; family is a strange concept in our culture, in that we wind up stuck with them both during and after our time in their actual proximity. What makes 'Geek Love' so engaging is the settings, the species, the raised bar of human decency granted to those ostracized from civilization in that particular way--granted to those seeking and taking freedom. And it is the story itself that is worth the read, and upon which my entire rating hangs.
What fought me the entire way through seems to be what most people have praised both when they have loved and hated the story: the writing. It's lyrical, strong. However I couldn't help but blanche at the imagined presence of Katherine Dunn smoking a cigarette, barely acknowledging my existence, and trying her Portlandy darnedest to alienate me with linguistic peculiarites. I know how much writers want to pen that golden sentence, that one that has never been written before and will never be written again. It seemed, though, that Dunn wanted to do this with every sentence of the novel, and at times I found it a little tiresome. Rarely, even, some of her terminologies made no sense at all.
Take this for exempli gratia: 'The pencil rocked steadily like a metronome, broke rhythm for a tiny jig, and then lapsed into a four-four waltz.' Kate, dear, honey? Waltzes don't come in four-four time. A waltz, almost by definition is in three-four--or at least in an odd time, like five-four. And I bow to the fact that this is a little detail, as is the term, 'flame-purple,' (because when I see certain shades of purple, one of the first things I compare it to is fire...) but the small number of these betray a hypothesis that Dunn was perhaps, at times, reaching.
Again, however, this may have been a conceptual choice. I haven't read anything else by Dunn yet, so I have no basis for that. But her view of the Binewski Fabulon is that its entire appeal within the world of the book is that it is so ugly and jarring that you can't look away. You want more of it. You give yourself to it. And in a way, the language used in the book matches that description. Because, well, despite my gripes, I admit and profess that I didn't skip one effing word of this book. It was a torture I wanted to imbibe.
And, lastly, it seemed to end its chapters and sections at really weird moments, almost as if it deliberately wanted you to come up with the ending all on your own. But I'll get to that in a second.
Page-turning freak show! My friend Emma put it best-- read at your own risk! I couldn't put it down.