Books: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

We've been reading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn lately at the suggestion of some friends of ours. The book follows a family of carny's before and after their crazy traveling carnival life. The main character is Olympia, a bald hunchback albino dwarf and her family, the Binewski's.

Al and Crystal Lil (a runaway Boston socialite) decide to start a family carnival with their own children and experiment with drugs and more (like radioactive isotopes) to induce freak children. They come up with Arturo the Aqua boy (born with flippers instead of limbs), The Twins: Elly and Iphy (Siamese twins with one set of legs but two torsos), Olympia, and Chick (aka Fortunato, an apparently normal child). They tour the country exhibiting their respective talents until things start to take a turn for the strangest when Arturo the Aqua Boy develops a cult following.


Quick vote: This book was strange and macabre. We didn't really like it, it was a bit too dark and grotesque for our tastes, but it was an interesting book to have read. So, don't read it, but be aware that it exists? I guess that is the moral of the story.