Love your Geek

Geek Love: A Novel
By Katherine Dunn

What do you do if you run a freak show and you start running out offreaks? Well, if you're Lil and Art, you impregnate Lil and then have her eat, drink and smoke everything pregnant ladies shouldn't get within 10 feet of. Sure, you'll end up with a few mistakes, or miscarriages as some people like to call them, but there will also be a few successes. Lil and Art get lucky a few times and have a boy with flippers where his arms and legs should be, an albino dwarf daughter with a hunchback and a pair of Siamese twins who share a pair of legs.

Sounds pleasant, no?

Yeah, Geek Love: A Novel is pretty crazy. It's not so much a horror novel but it has many of the genre's characteristics. There are malformed human sociopaths, murders, dismemberment, maggots, cults and sex. On top of this, the whole thing has that greasy feeling, like how your hair feels after you don't wash it for a few days.

The book follows the Now-and-Then story style in that it's the story of an Albino Dwarf Hunchback during two phases of her life. The first phase encompasses her youth, as her and the rest of the family freak show travel around the United States enchanting locals with their, well, freakishness. Things are great until Lil and Art have another child, a boy who seems to have no deformities but is telekinetic. While this might seem to present a whole slew of opportunities, it instead heralds massive family turmoil. Artie the flippered Aqua-Boy begins a cult, the Siamese twin sisters begin experimenting with sex and somewhere along the line a half-dead horse has its legs surgically removed but still manages to run around the circus.

Yeah, it's unpleasant stuff and can only end badly and it does.

The second phase of the story follows the Albino Dwarf Hunchback in her later years. She works in radio, secretly stalks the daughter she had with her Aqua-Boy brother and becomes friends with a woman who pays beautiful women to permanently disfigure themselves.

Again, this can't end well and it doesn't.

So many bad endings...see it's a bit like a horror novel. Anywho, Dunn's writing is strong and the characters are interesting. There are two plot lines, the first (the Then part) is a bit stronger but the second (the Now part) isn't bad but seems like it was tacked on. It could easily have been its own short story.

The problem I had with Geek Love was that I had to suspend my disbelief a bit too much for my liking. Sure I can go along with things like crazy hillbilly cannibals and heroes who forget to bring maps when they enter the Soul Sucking Forest of the Dark Lords in a horror or action novel but in a more realistic, sort of dramatic novel (that was actually a finalist for the National Book Awards) I demand a bit more. For example, who is going to join a cult where the ultimate goal of membership is to have all your limbs amputated so all that is left is a torso? It might be me, but I just don't see that many people lining up for that kind of elective surgery.

In all, Geek Love did keep me reading. I was anxious to see what crazy thing would happen next and Dunn doesn't disappoint. The crazy train just keeps chugging along!