Literary Love 
March 2002

Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn 

The concept of this book is amazing.  The Binewski's are a carnival family.  Crystal Lil, the mother, ingests drugs, insecticides and other potential mutagenic substances to create special children who will always have work in the carnival as geeks.

Most of the story is told from the POV of one of the daughters, Olympia, a not-so-geek Geek who lives in the shadow of her star geek brothers and sisters.

Her sisters, Iphy and Elly are Siamese twins.  Arty, her brother, has no arms or legs, only feet and hands and uses his special gift to become Aqua Boy.

The book started to drag for me about 1/3 of the way through, then kicked in again with full gusto at about 2/3 to the end.  I'm glad I didn't give into the temptation to put the book down.

Tony DuShane