Geek Love (Katherine Dunn)

Now this simple cover may point at technology with it's modern bright orange and block script. You may think, aww, how cute, a story of nerd romance perhaps involving online dating, thick glasses, hacker tan and awkward pauses. You would be wrong, however. Turn back traveler for there are rocks ahead! The word "geek" in this context is referring to the carnival/side show variety--the person who bites the heads off of live chickens with nothing but their own pearly whites, washing themselves in poultry blood, is called a "geek." Ahh, yes. You may get where this novel is going now.

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carnival family led by Al Binewski and his wife (an ex-Bostonian socialite and ex-geek) Crystal Lil. Frustrated at his inability to find and keep reliable circus freaks on hand, Al had the inspiration that he and Lil should simply create their own family of performers by dosing the pregnant mother with various concoctions of illegal drugs and toxins. What results is the most, ahem, unique family in the history of modern literature: Arturo the Aquaboy (with fins where limbs should be), Electra and Iphigenia the siamese twins (sharing a set of legs and sprouting at the waist into two, talented at piano duets), Olympia the side show barker (an albino, hunchback dwarf) and Fortunato (who appears entirely normal but is powerfully telekinetic).

The narrator is Olympia ("Oly"), who is the third or fourth child of the Binewskis (depending on whether you are counting heads or asses). She chronicles the story of her family from her childhood into the present with startling depth and seriousness. Sure, you will laugh. I guarantee that much. What surprises the reader is the true humanity that Dunn instills in her characters, even through their abnormality, even while they are talking about removing algae from Arturo's tank from the hard to reach spot behind his balls. Remember, he has no arms!

The story is also far from humorous. While bizarre and perverse, the events feel amazingly real, as if the reader has a tangible if odd-smelling handle to hold during the gripping sections. You will be shocked with Dunn's daring and also at her ability to take all that oddity and somehow transform it into understandable messages of belonging, love, identity and human (even such freakish humans) purpose.

This is the second time I have read this book and I still sped my way to the finish, enthralled in Oly's tale. Geek Love is a one of a kind read and a testament to Dunn's talent--not to take the everyday and make it extraordinary but instead to take the strange, the weird and the twisted and transform it into something universally touching and poignant.