Book 223. Geek Love. Katherine Dunn.
Honestly the strangest book I have ever read. So strange that I can't think of a single person to pass it onto. I struggled with it even though on paper it should appeal to my curious "weirdness" but for some reason I found it difficult.
"Lol Binewski born a Boston aristocrat, was in her time the most stylish of geeks. That is to say she made a living by biting the heads off live chickens in front of a carnival audience. This she gave up for doting motherhood, because she and her fairground owning husband had a money spinning idea. Throughout each pregnancy she hobbles pesticides, experimented with drugs and doused herself with radiation to ensure that her infants are grotesque enough to keep the turnstiles clicking. She does. Arturo the Aqua boy is a limbless megalomaniac, Electra and Iphigenia are musically gifted conjoined twins with a penchant for prostitution and Fortuna is possessed of strange telekinetic powers. The story is told by their sister Olympia. She is a bald, hunchbacked albino dwarf."
But.... It got much, much stranger....
Thanks to Hannah Conway for finding the book for me.
9/10 ( )

A book about the chicken-biting type of Geek Love. An engineered "freak", the hunchbacked dwarf protagonist Oly, tells the story of her childhood and teen years living deeply enmeshed with her family in a travelling carnival, interspersed with chapters of her life at 38.

It's a strange but interesting read for the most part, though at times, horrifying. The first third grabbed me, but later in the book my attention waned at times and I found the ending a little unsatisfactory. I'm not sure I like it very much. ( )

DNF. I’m not doing that to myself.

I asked my Facebook friends for book recommendations and added every one of them to my Want to Read list. This was recommended by someone I hardly know, who I now realize has far different tastes in books than I. (I have now removed this person’s other suggestions from my list. No hard feelings. Just very much not for me.)

Let’s just say I was expecting this to be a cutesy romance novel about nerds. I forgot about the antiquated origins of the word “geek.” ( )

A very strange book indeed! The subject matter isn't for everyone, and some will find it repelling. I did become very attached to the characters. And the story went well beyond the main subject, exploring cultural oddities, fascination with the grotesque, what is normal, family dynamics, unconditional love, group behavior, charismatic leaders, and on and on. ( )

Self-avowed bookworms will likely relate to the following dilemma. I always feel a slight sense of shame when I think back on a book that I ranked as 4 or 4.5 stars a couple years earlier but can barely recall the plot or any characters. My hunch is that this won’t happen with “Geek Love.” The incredibly strange storyline, built around a cast of bizarre characters (we’re talking about a hunchback, conjoined twins, a boy with flippers for hands and feet, among others) will most certainly stay with me beyond the 2020s. The themes are compelling. Dunn nudges readers to ponder the question of what is normal and to explore unusual family bonds. In the case of the Binewski family, a troupe of carnival performers, their “contact with norms (normal people) was in dashes and flashes.” I can understand why many readers were turned off — even repulsed — by some aspects of this peculiar saga. But it worked for me, keeping me engaged, curious and even morbidly entertained for the most part. So why not a 4.5 or even 5 star rating? “Geek Love” seemed to lose its footing in the final chapters. Candidly, I was ready for the story to end at least 50 pages before its dramatic conclusion. But when this strange yarn finally ended, the literary journey was time well spent. ( )