Geek Love: A Book Review

PREFACE: If this is your first trip to my blog, I write a lot of transgressive fiction and my blog posts are resources for other transgressive writers. I offer book reviews, transgressive topics for inspiration, research on social change, and creative writing techniques. The article below is meant to support writers looking for information and/or ideas.

Wow. Geek Love is an utterly, delightfully, incomprehensibly, wild ride.
 
Written by Katherine Dunn, Geek Love tells the story of a family of traveling carnival workers, but not just any. Dad, Al Binewski, took over the family business when his own dad died, he married Lil, and then put together drug cocktails during her pregnancies to create show-worthy babies that would attract more guests. Well, that’s one of the stories, anyway – this book has so many side stories happening at any given time, that Dunn’s planning is impressive. Told through point of view of Oly, one of the Binewski children, the book’s primary storyline centers around the children growing up and learning how to navigate life with their unique disabilities as a family of traveling performers. During this time, Arty, Oly’s brother, also learns what normal people act like and desire.
 
The children’s disabilities include Arty being half human and half an aquatic creature, Iphy and Elly being Siamese twins, Oly being an albino, hunchbacked dwarf, and Chick having a myriad of superpowers relating to telekinesis. As most families, each person in the Binewskis has a different personality, with Arty learning how to become the leader, despite his parents still being around. Eventually, the carnival turns into a massive cult with normal people from the outside, begging to have limbs removed under Arty’s directions. Arty’s attitude and beliefs continue to change, resulting in a series of traumatic events. Exploiting these disabilities is transgressive enough, but then Dunn uses the unusual beliefs of this disabled family to call attention to the struggles that “normal” people have when they start to volunteer to be mutilated. Lining up for limb-removals, or in another side plot: to be made undesirable so they can reach their full potential in their intelligence, Dunn makes a statement about life, perception, and purpose. The back cover says “Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene,” and I’d say it’s true. What makes something beautiful, and what makes us admire it? What makes something ugly, and what makes that bad? Writing characters who go against many social norms, doing some downright despicable, destructive things and betraying the people closest to them in the process, I’d absolutely consider this transgressive fiction.
 
I’ve addressed the use of the body in transgressive fiction, and Dunn does that many times over in Geek Love. She viscerally describes body deformities, body mutilation, and death of the body. The body is used to trap characters, both emotionally and physically, and harm them. (Without spoiling anything), by the end of the book, the disfigured body of one of the characters is “saved,” and Oly hopes that the saved character is able to carry on the family traditions.
 
Dunn provides many twists and turns, and from different characters, so skillfully, that it’s impressive each time it happens. Additionally, each time it happens, it’s because she’s clearly working to develop some major themes. I really am trying to avoid too many spoilers, so I’ll just say that the characters and plots lead to an experience full of trauma, isolation, desperation, and legacy.
 
This book shows that people might not feel isolated, but if people are isolated, then they can become something truly unique. The family kept to themselves, bred themselves, and burdened themselves to be on their own, which resulted in the belief systems they developed and the way the reacted to each member of the family, as if in an echo chamber. This, combined with Arty’s feeling of superiority to the normies, and his perceptive nature, resulted in the cult he fostered that led to so much destruction.
 
Like I said, the book is an utterly, delightfully incomprehensibly, wild ride. Parts of it may have you understanding, parts of it may make you feel sympathy, and most of it is disgusting. This book uses heavy description – I could have done with a little less, but the plot was so interesting to me, that I kept reading. This book uses multiple timelines as well, which may be off-putting to some readers, or may have you feeling that some of the stories/timelines are unnecessary; however, if you’re someone who wants something unexpected that criticizes social beliefs, then this book is for you.