So I first heard about Geek Love from the person that lent it to me. Our exchange went something like this:
Friend: Have you read Geek Love?
Me: No, I haven’t heard of it.
Friend: Seriously!? TAKE THIS.
My curiosity was further piqued by the back cover:
Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out—with the help of amphetamine, arsenic and radioisotopes—to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniacal 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.
Um, what? So many thoughts here, like “What does a geek mean in this situation? What kind of back blurb uses the words megalomaniacal and lissome in the same paragraph? What are you talking about FLIPPERS FOR LIMBS?!”
Continue reading “It’s Even Weirder Than It Sounds”
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