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    Geek Love
    Geek Love
    Geek Love
    Audiobook15 hours

    Geek Love

    Written by Katherine Dunn

    Narrated by Christina Moore

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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, 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 26, 2007
    ISBN9781428199071
    Geek Love
    Author

    Katherine Dunn

    Katherine Dunn was a novelist and boxing journalist who lived and worked in Oregon. She is the author of three novels: Attic; Truck; and Geek Love, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Prize. She died in 2016.

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    Reviews for Geek Love

    4/5

    1,723 ratings102 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Reading this one you enter a unique world. Great writing and excellent narration. Some of the intricasies of the social interaction between members of this tribe of geeks can be bit disturbing or disruptive. Do enter. And bring aflashlight so you find your way back. If you like.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite books of all time! Give it a chance.
    • 5/5
      Really good listen. Beautifully written and delightfully read. Takes you deep into the heart of an exotic world full of strange customs and flights of dangerous fancy.
    • 5/5
      I’ve never been so disgusted and intrigued. An exceptional book from start to finish.
    • 5/5
      An old favorite. Super twisted and visceral with excellent narration.
    • 5/5
      After having been told for YEARS to read this book, I decided to listen to it....and I am glad I did. This is a tale of uniquely 'created, and naturally born' people (hopefully fiction) who become the characters in Katherine Dunn's book. These are people you are never soon to forget as you are introduced to both the sickening and sadly bizarre. It is a tale that should not be read by kids. It is graphically told in scenes of disgust, rape, sex and violence as only could take place behind the tent and trailer walls of a traveling carnival. Experience this book, I am so glad I did.
      Highly recommended only to those who love the SERIOUS and SICKENINGLY BIZARRE.

      5 ??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️
    • 3/5
      This books seems like what Madeleine Is Sleeping wanted to be, which makes me a little surprised since both were National Book Award finalists and so much alike (15 years amnesia?). I'm glad my friend recommended it after giving her my dissatisfied synopsis of MIS because I had always heard the title and thought it sounded like chick lit about nerds. Ohhhh yeah...that other definition of geek. And in fact, I enjoyed it much more than MIS, but in the world of Goodreads stars, I guess I only think of it as one notch above. It was good enough. The writing was almost where I wanted it to be in relating the extravagant world of carnies--it was descriptive enough, although there were times I wouldn't have minded being completely devoured by sensory overload (which I wouldn't think is too hard to do with this subject matter). I loved the whole notion of deciding what makes a freak and what makes a norm. I often found myself wondering whether I loved or despised Oly...mainly finding the differences relied on whether it was the present ( ) or the past (-) (side note--she seems a lot like Claw-claw-Claudius a la I, Claudius during her youth; anyone else think so?). But I often felt that the novel as a whole was just shy of "enough." It is rife with suspensful moments, but they always seemed to feel isolated. I would eat up a particular scene and then felt like I had to put in my time to hike to the next spetacular or horrific occurence. I wanted to be hooked on how the heck Arty's maleficence would eventually explode, but I couldn't quite get there. I had fun reading about it, I would sometimes shudder at it, but I never feared it and I kinda wanted to. Ah well. Like I said. Good enough.
    • 4/5
      We are talking literal side-show geeks in this tragedy. A new volume has to be opened on the child abuse literature to contain the brutal fantasies which are the core of this dysfunctional and abusive family drama which consumes 3 generations leaving the barest fragments left to confront other monsters. Compellingly told but deserving of the wide varieties of responses it illicits elicits.
    • 1/5
      hmmmmm; what to say about this book........

      Geek Love is a book you can read. I'm not going to say it is a good book, but it is a book you can read. Personally, I wouldn't recommend that anyone read it, but it is a book you can read.

      I read it. I read the whole book and I still don't quite understand why; I have given up on books that were better than this. If you could just remove most of the plot and throw all the good bits together, you might have a pretty good short story.

      I didn't find this book to be very shocking, but I was annoyed by how shocking it was trying to be.

      The characters were not engaging. To be honest, I once read a book in which a can of beans, a dirty sock and a jelly spoon were more intriguing, compelling and more fully realized characters.

      Nothing to like here, people, move on.
    • 4/5
      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 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 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 is. 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 in the world as a hunchbacked albino dwarf, which is to say, a freak. Nor has she given up on the concept of family, 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.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed the unique writing style, but in the end the subject matter was just too weird for me. I had trouble staying interested in the cast of not terribly sympathetic characters.
    • 4/5
      Like carnival oddities, this book both fascinates and repulses at the same time.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      weird, but well-written and highly entertaining
    • 3/5
      Honestly, a book this fucked up should not have had been so boring. The entire Miss Lick plotline dragged on for ages and detracted from the overall story. Aside from that, I loved the slow burn of Arty and his quest for power and the whole cult, which is why I'm giving this one a 3.5.
    • 5/5
      LOVED this book! Cannot say enough good things about it. Fascinating, crazy, funny, and tragic. Beautifully written story - just great all-around.
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book, Dunn has an amazingly dark imagination. The relationship between Oly and Mary Lick reminded me of Lenny and George in Of Mice and Men. I would love to read other books by Dunn if they are anything like this one.
    • 5/5
      At some point probably 15 years ago I had this book for a couple years then lost it to a friend who lent it to his girlfriend (and then they broke up). Then I purchased it again 3 or 4 years ago, because I had heard a lot of good things about it. Finally got to it this year and loved it. It's definitely not for everyone, but I will say it's unforgettable and that the writing was brave and at times beautiful. It was not at all what I thought it would be, there was only passing mentions of "geeks", I guess I thought it would be more gross than it was. It made me hate certain characters and care about others and I believe that is the goal of any book.
    • 5/5
      Holy crap what was that? Not sure, but I loved it. Weirdest literature EVAH
    • 4/5
      I picked this book up (almost 10 years ago now) after hearing good things, not really knowing what it was about. You see the title and, in my case, imagine something along the lines of a couple of awkward, geeky teenagers falling in love. Well, no. Even after reading the book description and thinking that you might have an idea of what you're in for, you'd be mistaken. In truth, this is a story about a carnival family, but not just any carnival family. This family is one that purposely strives to procreate "freakish" children -- those with physical or other undefinable deformities -- and where having a "normal" child would not be acceptable.I still am not sure how I feel about this book. I alternated between laughing, being awestruck, and being truly horrified by some of the things happening in this story. Just when I thought I couldn't be shocked any more, something even more shocking would occur. I thought about bailing on this one a few times, but ultimately I wanted to know how it would all end, so I kept reading. It is almost certainly one of the oddest books I have ever read. It seems to have a certain cult following, which I get, and some readers will love it, but I can't say that it's necessarily in my wheelhouse. However, it's certainly unique and would spur some interesting conversation and discussion.
    • 3/5
      I was much more interested in the framing story than the backstory, and after a good beginning, I did not get much of that framing stories. Nice enough ideads, but I wasn't particulary interested in the main characters and their way of live, which is probably the focus of the book. I didn't learn anything either, about carny work or the world or people. So, okayish, and intriguing, but not for me.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't aware of this novel until the author died, which was recently. Neil Gaiman and a few other writers used this as their parting memory--a particularly influential book (Kurt Cobain cited it as an influence). I looked it up and found the summary intriguing -- a married couple engineers their children to be circus freaks for their literal "Family Circus". It sounded horrific and darkly bizarre, like all those dark carnival/clown tropes I love.The accolades are not dismissible. Whereas a book like "Stranger in a Strangeland" is tainted by anachronisms (like the hippie counter-culture and there being actual life on Mars), this one has no such compunctions. Although it has the sensibilities of the mid-seventies (published in 1980), it's not steeped in that culture, adding to timelessness. It's basically the family story the husband and wife traveling carnival owners and their four circus freak children -- one's a dolphin-boy, one/two are Siamese twin girls, one's an albino hunchback who's our POV character (because she's just a run of the mill abnormality). The main plot thread involves the dolphin-boy who gets hungry for fame. So he grows his mild audience of curiosity into a migratory cult of amputees.But this is just one--it reads like a rise and fall of an empire as jealousy and ignorance lead to destruction. There's also a strange framing device about the hunchback keeping a stalker eye on the daughter she gave up for adoption, and this starts in the beginning but doesn't come back until the end. I think that's the novel's biggest flaw.I can honestly say I've never read a book like this. Like "Freaks" crossed with "East of Eden". The characters are well-developed and evolve over the course of the story. Even the infodumps are fun to read, assuming you like reading "top five miscarriages I keep in glass jars in our trailer". Is this book for everyone? Definitely not. It's for the subset of people who like Rob Zombie and Alan Moore. It contains elements we take for granted now that made big booms on the 1980's video shelves, like surgical horror and deformity. For some reason, it seems to resonate with females more than males, maybe because of the "freaky but family" vibe. The shock value has a pay-off.Now... all that being said, this is the book that made me re-evaluate my criteria for selection and sticking with a book on the "to-read shelf". It's really good, but it's JUST SO LONG. I felt trapped by it at a certain point, like I was in book jail. Reading the same set of characters in the same plot forever on, never coming to an end. Is there such a thing as hate-reading? Like hate-fucking? Where you're enjoying the act on a base level, but your forebrain is motivated by spite or malice to continue? That's what it felt like. Maybe I've got a short attention span, maybe I'm the MTV generation, but this book didn't need to be as long as it was. I am of the mind that editing is a golden gift. As crucial as knowing what to put in is what to take out.
    • 5/5
      Terrific. Lots of themes - body, normalcy, control, nature vs. nurture, sibling rivalry, identity, creation and creativity, illusion, power, nature of self, manipulation, ethics - with terrific narrative voice and excellent plot, characters and pacing. Fracturing of writing style mirrors fractures/separations between family members and fracturing of physical self.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It had some cringy moments that were perfectly framed to unnerve the reader. My only problem with the book was the pacing. The book seemed to amble on for most of the narrative arc, with plenty of not-to-subtle foreshadowing before leaping into the final act and speeding through the main impetus of the story. It made the ending seem like a bit of an afterthought. The very end of the story, the epilogue, was unnecessary and again seemed a little obvious and unsatisfying. For the most part, however, the characters were interesting and their relationships were complex
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      I wish I could say that what made me the queasiest about Geek Love was the novel's arguably exploitative approach to telling a story about exploitation, but truthfully, it was the parade of horrifying plot elements that most turned my stomach. A partial catalogue of the appalling incidents that are fitted into these 350 pages: the intentional creation of a variety of birth defects, human specimens preserved in formaldehyde, serial elective amputations on a mass scale, a would-be murderer capitalizing years later on an opportunity to rape some of his victims, incestuous desires to varying degrees requited and consummated, questionably elective lobotomies, a grotesquely modified horse. That these are rendered with genuinely sickening force is evidence, no doubt, of some real powers on the part of the author, and I would like to hold open the theoretical possibility that such elements could be combined into a novel with serious moral force. Here, however, they come together for no greater purpose I could discern than to shock and disgust. I hoped until the final chapters to be struck by a vision that would be original and transporting, and almost certainly very disturbing--my naive mistake. Rather than a vision, what I saw was ultimately a collection of views into an unremittingly cruel imagined world, with no more interesting comment on the world I recognize than what I could find in a campus bathroom stall.
    • 2/5
      I thought the premise of this book was amazing. Deformed children that were made as a result drug experimentation and toxin exposure? Children deliberately engineered to be freaks so they could become main attractions in their parents travel carnival? Unfortunately for me, this book did not live up to my expectations. At times it was entertaining and boggling, but overall it felt disjointed. I did not become emotionally invested in any of the characters, until the last couple of chapters. I found myself thinking "I just don't care what happens to them" through more than two-thirds of the book. I did enjoy the last couple of chapters when we found out the fate of the twins and the rest of the carnival, and the way Dunn tied everything together made for an outstanding conclusion. I just wish I would've felt that way before the last 50 pages.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      What a CRAZY book! I happened upon this book on a "If you liked...then try..."site. It told me that if I had liked American Horror Story: Freak Show, then I should read this book by Dunn.

      Al and Lil actually try to procreate freaks, called "geeks" in the book. Lil takes all kinds of substances while pregnant to ensure their children are not "norms". Aside from the ones who don't make it, kept for posterity in jars in "the chute", they are pretty successful.

      As a fan of the 1932 movie "Freaks" by Tod Browning, I was not surprised or horrified by anything I read here. Freaks are so on the outside, but are human beings on the inside. The juxtaposition of "norms" who manipulate and kill (like Dr. P in the book) with the "freaks" who only want to be accepted (like our narrator) is a common theme in tales like this one.

      However, Arty the Aqua Boy was a freak of a freak. The perfect antagonist, he reeked of jealousy, narcissism and yes, a little bit of an incestuous bent. His fierce competition with his Siamese twin sisters for the box office could have been comical if it were not so intense. His loathing for those who came to see him drove him to push them father than I am sure anyone thought they would go.

      The one item I had trouble buying was the rise of Arty's control. You will, of course, have to read the book; but he gains control at an age and rate that is unbelievable, even for a story of freaks. Al was a "man's man", and had firm control of the business. However, when Arty started to take over, there was no wrangling at all. That would have made for an interesting dynamic in the relationship of father/son that was missing.

      The other characters were interesting and well-drawn. I particularly liked Mary Lick and would have liked to have read more of her.

      All-in-all, it was a very enjoyable and fast read. However, I don't see the hubbub of other reviewers in citing this book as trailblazing or groundbreaking. It was a nice, fun read which was well-written and could have used about 100 more pages.

      Recommended.
    • 2/5
      I was not prepared for this book. The family relationships were altogether disturbing, not to mention the physical appearance of Arturo, which I still can't quite picture, and the cult practices that develop around him.Popsugar Reading Challenge 2015 | Task 30: Published the year you were born (1989)