Those children who fail to survive the traumatic pregnancies are preserved in jars for public viewing those who do survive are put to work in the circus. Olympia, or Oly, is one of four freak children born to Al and “Crystal Lil” Binewski, who run a traveling circus and create their own sideshow freaks by feeding Crystal Lil poisons, pills, insecticides, and radioisotopes during her pregnancies. Olympia’s freakish nature is not an aberration of nature so much as a carefully planned deviation. Katherine Dunn’s 1983 novel is the first-person story of Olympia Binewski, an albino, bald dwarf with a hunchback. It is gross, revolting, tragic, bizarre, shocking, and extraordinarily moving. If your tastes run more to the nature of Jane Austen or Robert Browning, Geek Love is not the novel for you.
Despite its nomination for a National Book Award, this isn’t a book I recommend to just any lover of literature. I fell in love with this warped tale of a dysfunctional family almost 20 years ago.
Upon starting the book, I immediately learned that the geeks of the title aren’t nerds, but circus freaks, aka “geeks”, and the love referred to in the title is more familial than romantic. If nothing else, it will have you questioning your pre-conceived notions of normality and beauty.When a friend recommended Geek Love to me, I imagined a tale of two nerds brought together through their passion for Star Trek and video games, a tale which reaffirmed that there truly was someone for everyone, even those souls lacking in beauty and social skills. Although this is a horrifying book at times, it is a fierce and intelligent deconstruction of the concept of normalcy. Dunn's prose is vivid and stunning, and within the pages of this novel she has written some of the most wonderfully constructed sentences I have ever read. The 'freaks' and the 'norms' that inhabit Dunn's world are as capable of love as they are of cruelty, respectively. The Binewski's do not see themselves as deformed or inhuman, but as beautiful and interesting creatures that are able to use their extraordinariness to their advantage. Geek Love is as moving is it is diabolical, as human as it is magical. But there is much more to Geek Love than pure shock value. I admit that the concept of creating genetically altered children in order to have a travelling circus of freaks does raise a number of ethical questions. Vanessa writes: At first glance the story of the Binewski's, a carny couple who decide to take a number of psycho-active drugs in order to breed a family of 'freaks' is a rather disturbing tale.
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