Book Summary and Reviews of Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love

A Novel

by Katherine Dunn

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  • Published:
  • Jun 2002, 368 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes.

Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan ... Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins ... albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious—and dangerous—asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A Fellini movie in ink... . Geek Love throws a punch." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Wonderfully descriptive... . Dunn [has a] tremendous imagination." —The New York Times Book Review

"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 information about Geek Love was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

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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