Geek Love - Softcover

Dunn, Katherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349100861 ISBN 13: 9780349100869

Publisher: Penguin, 1990

Synopsis

Lil Binewski, born a Boston aristocrat, was in her time the most stylish of geeks. That is to say she made her 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 Lil gobbles pesticides, experiments with drugs and douses herself with radiation to ensure that she prodcues infants grotesque enough to keep the turnstiles clicking. She does.Arturo the Aqua Boy is a limbless megalomaniac, Electra and Iphigenia are musically gifted Siamese twins with a penchant for prostitution and Fortunato is possessed of stange telekinetic powers. Their story- by turns shocking, tender, touching and cruel- is narrated by their sister Olympia., She is a bald, hunchbacked, albino dwarf.

About this title

Review:

I felt electrocuted when I read that first page with Crystal Lil and her freak brood. I stood there in the bookstore and my jaw came unhinged. No book I've read, before or since, has given me that specific jolt (Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia)

The most romantic novel about love and family I have read. It made me ashamed to be so utterly normal (Terry Gilliam)

Riveting and extremely well-crafted. There's a real philosophy behind it where it actually touches on the profound. (Margaret Forster)

If Flannery O'Connor had consumed vast quantities of LSD, she might have written like this (Literary Review)

A Fellini movie in ink...Geek Love throws a punch (San Francisco Chronicle)

Like most great novels, this one keeps the reader marveling at the daring of the author (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Unrelentingly bizarre . . .perverse but riveting . . . Will keep you turning the pages (Chicago Tribune)

This audacious, mesmerizing novel should carry a warning: ``Reader Beware.'' Those entering the world of carnival freaks described by narrator Olympia Binewski, a bald, humpbacked albino dwarf, will find no escape from a story at once engrossing and repellent, funny and terrifying, unreal and true to human nature. Dunn's vivid, energetic prose, her soaring imagination and assured narrative skill fuse to produce an unforgettable tale (Publishers Weekly)

If Flannery O'Connor has consumed vast quantities of LSD, she might have written like this. (LITERARY REVIEW)

A book of bizarre and brutal beauty, guaranteed to wring from you horror and heartbreak by turns... (COMPANY)

Book Description:

National Book Award finalist and a cult classic.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0349100861
• ISBN 13: 9780349100869
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256