Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
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Description
Nominated for the National Book Award, Geek Love is mesmerizing, daring, and unconventional. Award-winning novelist Katherine Dunn fascinates and amazes much the same way tornados, earthquakes, and volcanos do. No one wants to be a victim, but most find the event too hypnotic to ignore. In order to save their traveling carnival from bankruptcy, the Binewskis are creating their own brood of sideshow freaks. Under Al's careful direction, the pregnant Lil ingests radioisotopes, insecticides, show more and arsenic to make her babies "special." As the oldest daughter, albino dwarf Olympia, puts listeners in the ring side seat, her family's incredible drama erupts and spills over into the "normal" world. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart, this brilliantly daring novel is shocking and delightful. Christina Moore's vibrant narration conspires with Katherine Dunn's evocative, energetic prose to shock us at seeing something of ourselves in these exotic characters. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
fyrefly98 Both are books featuring sideshow freaks, and both are about the need to define identity through uniqueness, and the costs of doing so.
10
Seveteje Dark humor, Disability, A Smidge of Magical Realism, Travel
susanbooks another fascinatingly grotesque, intensely enmeshed family
ligature A compelling but brutal story with horrible characters.
by Cecrow
andbirds A similar story about a very odd, unique family.
Member Reviews
Over the years I've seen many comments about how disturbing Geek Love is in the reading. I had always assumed that the disturbing element in the narrative is the book's vibrant strain of the macabre. Given that I have a high tolerance for that sort of thing, I was expecting not to be disturbed and was looking forward to enjoying a well written, out of the ordinary tale. Lo and behold, I found large sections of Geek Love disturbing indeed. Not for its element of macabre, however. For at its core, this book for me is about malevolence, and about how a charismatically malevolent person can somehow inspire unconditional love and dedication instead of revulsion and dread. The level of malevolence portrayed is so deep as to be downright show more Shakespearean, and some of the acts perpetrated by the central character are, indeed, disturbing in the reading and in the post-reading reflection. The book is really a story within a story, both told by a well-developed character with a very good narrative voice. Unfortunately for me, both stories, the "present day" and the flashback tale, end rather abruptly and, for me, unsatisfyingly. I'm glad I read this book, but I wouldn't go out of my way to suggest it to anybody. show less
A carnival owner and his wife decide to "create" their own sideshow attractions by experimenting with drugs, radiation, and the like during pregnancy.
With that outlandish premise, Dunn leads the reader through the tent flap and, gradually, deeper and deeper into the bizarre and isolated world of the traveling carnival that incubates the Binewski children. The five children are: Arty, born with flippers for arms and legs; the conjoined twins Elly and Iphy; the narrator, an albino, hunchback dwarf named Olympia; and baby Chick, with the most special powers of all. As they grow up, separated from the world, never really sure where the carnival is at any particular time, and constantly reinforced with how special they are when compared to show more the "norms," a certain warping is bound to occur. We are fully ensnared by this time as Dunn gradually ratchets up the horror, introducing more demented characters and increasingly grotesque elements, but we've paid our money and we're going to look. Even as we silently think that she can't go there, that is indeed where Dunn chooses to go.
But yet, despite the grotesqueness and strangeness of these characters and this story, it is at its essence about family: what makes a family, what we will do for our families, what our families do to us. This book is not just about ogling freaks. It's about contemplating the freak inside. show less
With that outlandish premise, Dunn leads the reader through the tent flap and, gradually, deeper and deeper into the bizarre and isolated world of the traveling carnival that incubates the Binewski children. The five children are: Arty, born with flippers for arms and legs; the conjoined twins Elly and Iphy; the narrator, an albino, hunchback dwarf named Olympia; and baby Chick, with the most special powers of all. As they grow up, separated from the world, never really sure where the carnival is at any particular time, and constantly reinforced with how special they are when compared to show more the "norms," a certain warping is bound to occur. We are fully ensnared by this time as Dunn gradually ratchets up the horror, introducing more demented characters and increasingly grotesque elements, but we've paid our money and we're going to look. Even as we silently think that she can't go there, that is indeed where Dunn chooses to go.
But yet, despite the grotesqueness and strangeness of these characters and this story, it is at its essence about family: what makes a family, what we will do for our families, what our families do to us. This book is not just about ogling freaks. It's about contemplating the freak inside. show less
What a disturbing novel about what it means to be "human" or a person, and the lengths people go to to feel special. If anything, this novel is a reflection of both the desire and the disgust for difference that exists within the human race. We love the absurd, Geek Love tells us, because it allows us to feel normal; but what Geek Love also shows is how we hate the normal because it makes us feel useless.
What I loved most is how every single character is despicable and unlikable in their own ways, yet you can't help but love them all. Maybe that's the most disturbing part: about how people who do disgusting things can be so close to your heart, and how easy it is to forgive them even when you know what they do is wrong.
Everyone I talk show more about this book with says they want to read it. I will admit, this is probably because I absolutely adored it. The writing can be a bit dry at times, dense with words, and the plot is slow, but it's this slowness that lets you sink into the world, lets you understand the carnivalesque, lets you feel almost... almost like you could be one of them. But you're not. And the novel never lets you forget that.
I will warn you, as I warn everyone I talk to this book with, it is highly disturbing and not for those with weak stomachs or hearts. There is a lot that is messed up, twisted to the point where you can't believe people would do such things and yet... you understand their choices exactly.
Because, Geek Love shows us, we're all monsters, and if we aren't, we all crave to be one. show less
What I loved most is how every single character is despicable and unlikable in their own ways, yet you can't help but love them all. Maybe that's the most disturbing part: about how people who do disgusting things can be so close to your heart, and how easy it is to forgive them even when you know what they do is wrong.
Everyone I talk show more about this book with says they want to read it. I will admit, this is probably because I absolutely adored it. The writing can be a bit dry at times, dense with words, and the plot is slow, but it's this slowness that lets you sink into the world, lets you understand the carnivalesque, lets you feel almost... almost like you could be one of them. But you're not. And the novel never lets you forget that.
I will warn you, as I warn everyone I talk to this book with, it is highly disturbing and not for those with weak stomachs or hearts. There is a lot that is messed up, twisted to the point where you can't believe people would do such things and yet... you understand their choices exactly.
Because, Geek Love shows us, we're all monsters, and if we aren't, we all crave to be one. show less
You ever read a book that feels less like a story and more like being dragged through a carnival after midnight—lights flickering, something rotting behind the cotton candy, everyone smiling just a little too wide?
That’s Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
And I don’t mean that as a warning. I mean it as a dare.
This isn’t one of those polite novels you stack on your nightstand to signal you’re “well-read.” This thing breathes. It mutates. It stares back at you and asks questions you don’t want to answer—about family, about love, about what we’re willing to deform in ourselves just to belong to something.
The premise alone should be enough to send most people running: parents who intentionally engineer their children to be show more “freaks” for a traveling circus. But that’s just the surface-level grotesque—the hook. The real horror is quieter. It’s devotion twisted into something unrecognizable. It’s loyalty that crosses a line so gradually you don’t notice until you’re already on the other side, nodding along.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth of it: you do nod along.
I caught myself doing it—justifying things I shouldn’t, understanding people I didn’t want to understand. That’s Dunn’s trick. She doesn’t ask for your sympathy. She takes it.
There’s something in here about the lie we tell ourselves—that love is inherently good. That family is sacred. That belonging is worth whatever it costs.
This book doesn’t argue against those ideas. It just quietly shows you what they look like when taken to their logical extreme… and lets you sit there with it.
No moral. No clean ending. No relief.
Just the lingering sense that the line between “them” and “us” is thinner than we’d like to admit—and maybe always has been.
Read it if you want something safe, and you’ll hate it.
Read it if you want something true, and it’ll stay with you longer than you’d like. show less
That’s Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
And I don’t mean that as a warning. I mean it as a dare.
This isn’t one of those polite novels you stack on your nightstand to signal you’re “well-read.” This thing breathes. It mutates. It stares back at you and asks questions you don’t want to answer—about family, about love, about what we’re willing to deform in ourselves just to belong to something.
The premise alone should be enough to send most people running: parents who intentionally engineer their children to be show more “freaks” for a traveling circus. But that’s just the surface-level grotesque—the hook. The real horror is quieter. It’s devotion twisted into something unrecognizable. It’s loyalty that crosses a line so gradually you don’t notice until you’re already on the other side, nodding along.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth of it: you do nod along.
I caught myself doing it—justifying things I shouldn’t, understanding people I didn’t want to understand. That’s Dunn’s trick. She doesn’t ask for your sympathy. She takes it.
There’s something in here about the lie we tell ourselves—that love is inherently good. That family is sacred. That belonging is worth whatever it costs.
This book doesn’t argue against those ideas. It just quietly shows you what they look like when taken to their logical extreme… and lets you sit there with it.
No moral. No clean ending. No relief.
Just the lingering sense that the line between “them” and “us” is thinner than we’d like to admit—and maybe always has been.
Read it if you want something safe, and you’ll hate it.
Read it if you want something true, and it’ll stay with you longer than you’d like. show less
This book made me cry. Which is quite a thing in itself, considering its macabre, grotesque premise. I read it because I love all things circus — this book brings "freak show" to a whole new level.
I found its dark humour immensely satisfying. And somehow, it's simultaneously heartwarming and really fucked up. It's so imaginative and shocking and crosses so many boundaries, yet it's riveting and gives us food for thought about the weird and the normal, the lengths people would go to feel good about themselves, and just generally how fucked up we are.
I found its dark humour immensely satisfying. And somehow, it's simultaneously heartwarming and really fucked up. It's so imaginative and shocking and crosses so many boundaries, yet it's riveting and gives us food for thought about the weird and the normal, the lengths people would go to feel good about themselves, and just generally how fucked up we are.
It's been nice to watch "Geek Love" -- a foundation stone of disability lit and a love letter to the American road and the Pacific Northwest -- acquire an audience over the past few years. There's a lot about the book that charms. We get to experience the weird, hermetic world of a carnival, to meet a gaggle of unforgettably odd, mostly sympathetic characters, and hear about the experiences and views of Olympia Binewski, humpbacked albino dwarf and all-around survivor. Even though the author successfully avoids most spooky-carnival cliches, "Geek Love" has its own sort of magic. It helps, of course, that Katherine Dunn could write like a champ. Her sentences are both knotty and wonderfully precise, allowing her to lend a sort of show more forthrightness to material that lesser writers would use for cheap atmosphere.
On rereading "Geek Love," though, I was struck by how dispassionate a lot the analysis that Katherine Dunn includes here actually is. Well, maybe "dispassionate" is the wrong word: many characters in this book do care for each other. But "Geek Love" is much more thematically coherent than you'd think a book about carnival geeks would be. Without being excessively cold-blooded or theoretical, the book really does mean to lay out the various ways in which capitalism makes use of normative and non-normative bodies. "Geek Love" spends a surprising amount of time considering the economic and cultural structures that underlie the freak show. Or maybe it's not so surprising: the Binewskis know that that, at the end of the day, the point of their enterprise is to sell tickets to the norms. The novel's characters helpfully delineate the difference between born freaks, made freaks, freaks forced into normativity, and normals who merely dabble in freakery. The author carefully catalogs not just extreme bodily difference but the responses it elicits: while carnival crowds gawk, monstrous Arturo the Aqua Boy exults in his freakishness. One of the book's characters disfigures young women to make sure that they obtain good jobs at good wages, while, at the same time, most of the carnival's young geeks are bound for Ivy League schools as soon as the summer ends. Freakishness, as a category, is pretty fluid here, but I think that Dunn also wants to demonstrate how tough and resistant to change even the most unusual bodies are. Olympia is, at the time of her narration, already growing old but must constantly strive to navigate everyday life being two feet shorter than most people, and taking two steps to their one. Not that she has she given up on the concept of family, exactly: the blood ties that was always at the center of her rootless carnival experience. Freakishness -- the kind that packs the stands, at least -- comes and goes in "Geek Love", but the body always seems to persevere. This book deserves its reputation as a left-field classic. show less
On rereading "Geek Love," though, I was struck by how dispassionate a lot the analysis that Katherine Dunn includes here actually is. Well, maybe "dispassionate" is the wrong word: many characters in this book do care for each other. But "Geek Love" is much more thematically coherent than you'd think a book about carnival geeks would be. Without being excessively cold-blooded or theoretical, the book really does mean to lay out the various ways in which capitalism makes use of normative and non-normative bodies. "Geek Love" spends a surprising amount of time considering the economic and cultural structures that underlie the freak show. Or maybe it's not so surprising: the Binewskis know that that, at the end of the day, the point of their enterprise is to sell tickets to the norms. The novel's characters helpfully delineate the difference between born freaks, made freaks, freaks forced into normativity, and normals who merely dabble in freakery. The author carefully catalogs not just extreme bodily difference but the responses it elicits: while carnival crowds gawk, monstrous Arturo the Aqua Boy exults in his freakishness. One of the book's characters disfigures young women to make sure that they obtain good jobs at good wages, while, at the same time, most of the carnival's young geeks are bound for Ivy League schools as soon as the summer ends. Freakishness, as a category, is pretty fluid here, but I think that Dunn also wants to demonstrate how tough and resistant to change even the most unusual bodies are. Olympia is, at the time of her narration, already growing old but must constantly strive to navigate everyday life being two feet shorter than most people, and taking two steps to their one. Not that she has she given up on the concept of family, exactly: the blood ties that was always at the center of her rootless carnival experience. Freakishness -- the kind that packs the stands, at least -- comes and goes in "Geek Love", but the body always seems to persevere. This book deserves its reputation as a left-field classic. show less
Geek Love was amazing. I had just been complaining to my beloved about my lack of emotional involvement in any of my recent books, decrying either modern writing or my own benumbed sensitivity. After closing The Road, I picked up Geek Love solely because it was on hold for someone else at the library and thus had to returned within the week. Within the first few pages, I was hooked. That spice that was missing from the other two books was here in plenty.
Olympia Binewski, aka Hopalong McGurk, is an albino hunchback dwarf, and she is narrates your way as you follow the Binewski family from its humble beginnings to its cataclysmic end (don't worry, this is evident pretty quickly so I don't think it's much of a spoiler). Along the way you show more get to know Arturo, or AquaMan, the flipper boy megalomaniac with a sever self-esteem problem; Iphy and Elly, the siamese twins, joined at waist, who play piano, sing, and try to find a way into adulthood while literally joined at the hip; Chick, the youngest Binewski, who appears to be normal but seems to be somehow more than he appears; Crystal Lil, the mother who dedicated her life to producing her Rose Garden of circus freaks and has ended up a hopeless addict, due to the treatments her husband Al gave her; and all the rest of the staff, including Horst the Cat Man, the Redheads, the various geeks, and all the other characters you expect to find in a side show. And that's just the backstory. Woven around this frame is a story told in the present, after all the carnival days have ended, and Oly has transformed herself into Hopalong McGurk. As she tries to get by in a world where she truly is a freak, she finds herself involved in yet another circle of freakishness, only this time she's not just the errand girl.
The story itself is fascinating enough to draw plenty of readers, but Ms. Dunn also brings the characters to full 3-dimensional life. You can picture Oly, with her wig and glasses, or Arty in his greasepaint. When bad things happen, and they do, you feel for the family, even as you sometimes hate them for their decisions. Every character is drawn as a deeply flawed human, with good characteristics balanced by grievous character flaws. The writing was of the sort that ends up merging with the images it creates, so that it's less like reading than like living amongst the characters.
All that said, this is obviously not a book for everyone. It's sometimes graphic depictions of a life outside of mainstream society would no doubt offend many readers. This is a sideshow, and in sideshow people do really nasty stuff. I once dated a sideshow freak, and in the course of the relationship met a number of geeks, pinheads, firebreathers, hairy ladies, and so on, some of them rather well-known, so this life is fairly familiar to me. I still find it deeply disturbing at times, but at least I'm not shocked. Others will be, if they realize that most of what Ms. Dunn described as happening at a carnival is fairly accurate. show less
Olympia Binewski, aka Hopalong McGurk, is an albino hunchback dwarf, and she is narrates your way as you follow the Binewski family from its humble beginnings to its cataclysmic end (don't worry, this is evident pretty quickly so I don't think it's much of a spoiler). Along the way you show more get to know Arturo, or AquaMan, the flipper boy megalomaniac with a sever self-esteem problem; Iphy and Elly, the siamese twins, joined at waist, who play piano, sing, and try to find a way into adulthood while literally joined at the hip; Chick, the youngest Binewski, who appears to be normal but seems to be somehow more than he appears; Crystal Lil, the mother who dedicated her life to producing her Rose Garden of circus freaks and has ended up a hopeless addict, due to the treatments her husband Al gave her; and all the rest of the staff, including Horst the Cat Man, the Redheads, the various geeks, and all the other characters you expect to find in a side show. And that's just the backstory. Woven around this frame is a story told in the present, after all the carnival days have ended, and Oly has transformed herself into Hopalong McGurk. As she tries to get by in a world where she truly is a freak, she finds herself involved in yet another circle of freakishness, only this time she's not just the errand girl.
The story itself is fascinating enough to draw plenty of readers, but Ms. Dunn also brings the characters to full 3-dimensional life. You can picture Oly, with her wig and glasses, or Arty in his greasepaint. When bad things happen, and they do, you feel for the family, even as you sometimes hate them for their decisions. Every character is drawn as a deeply flawed human, with good characteristics balanced by grievous character flaws. The writing was of the sort that ends up merging with the images it creates, so that it's less like reading than like living amongst the characters.
All that said, this is obviously not a book for everyone. It's sometimes graphic depictions of a life outside of mainstream society would no doubt offend many readers. This is a sideshow, and in sideshow people do really nasty stuff. I once dated a sideshow freak, and in the course of the relationship met a number of geeks, pinheads, firebreathers, hairy ladies, and so on, some of them rather well-known, so this life is fairly familiar to me. I still find it deeply disturbing at times, but at least I'm not shocked. Others will be, if they realize that most of what Ms. Dunn described as happening at a carnival is fairly accurate. show less
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Als untalentiertestes von fünf Wunderkindern aufzuwachsen ist nicht leicht. Als kleinwüchsige, bucklige Albina das gewöhnlichste von fünf Kindern zu sein, ist wohl mehr als nur „nicht leicht“. Binewskis. Zerfall einer radioaktiven Familie ist nicht nur die Geschichte einer Familie, die sich spektakulär von innen heraus zersetzt, sondern ein Roman, der ganz unauffällig wichtige Fragen show more an die moderne Gesellschaft stellt. show less
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Author Information
16+ Works 7,446 Members
Katherine Dunn was born in Garden City, Kansas on October 24, 1945. She was educated at Portland State University and Reed College. Her first novel, Attic, was published in 1970. Her other novels included Truck and Geek Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1989. She also worked as a boxing reporter, a columnist, and a poet. show more Her non-fiction book, School of Hard Knocks: The Struggle for Survival in America's Toughest Boxing Gyms, received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Award in 2004. She died from complications of lung cancer on May 11, 2016 at the age of 70. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Notable Lists
The Great American Novels (1989)
Pajiba's Best Books of the Generation (No 11 – 2007)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Geek Love
- Original publication date
- 1989
- People/Characters
- Olympia Binewski; Lillian Hinchcliff Binewski; Aloysius Binewski; Arturo Binewski; Electra Binewski; Iphigenia Binewski (show all 14); Fortunato "Chick" Binewski; Miranda Barker; Norval Sanderson; Mary T. Lick; Horst the Cat Man; Zephir McGurk; Vern Bogner; Dr. Phyllis Gleaner
- Important places
- Portland, Oregon, USA
- Epigraph
- This thing of darkness I Acknowledge mine.
—Prospero, The Tempest 5.1.275–6 - Dedication
- For Eli Malachy Dunn Dapolonia
- First words
- "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing."
- Quotations
- It’s interesting that when these individuals choose--and it is their choice always--to endure voluntary amputations for their own personal benefit, society professes itself shocked and disapproving. Yet this same society r... (show all)espects the concept that any individual should risk total annihilation in war, subject to the judgment of any superior officer at all and for the purposes ranging from a promotion for the lieutenant to higher profits for the bullet company. Hell, they don’t just respect that idea, they flat expect it. And they’ll shoot your ass if you don’t go along with it. (Arty)
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Bolt us to the hood of your traveling machine and take us on the road again.
With love,
Olympia Binewski
(Known as McGurk) - Publisher's editor
- Mehta, Sonny
- Blurbers
- Forster, Margaret
- Original language
- English US
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3554.U47
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 6,635
- Popularity
- 1,812
- Reviews
- 169
- Rating
- (3.99)
- Languages
- 9 — Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 35
- ASINs
- 16