Extreme nature versus nurture

One of my all time favorite books, still vivid in my mind after a few years, is Katherine Dunn's GEEK LOVE. A profoundly disturbing book, Dunn will make the word freak take on a whole new and very real connotation for the intrepid reader.

This books takes the world as '‘norms'’ know it, turns it on its head and spins it around so fast that nothing looks the same. "Normal" people are plain and contemptible. Katherine Dunn crawls inside the dark recesses of the human mind to explore its darkest forms of love, loyalty, vengeance and what it really means to be normal when the world around is a mutant big top.

In the simplest of terms, GEEK LOVE is the story of the Binewskis, a carnival family, and their “Carnival Fabulon”. On the verge of bankruptcy, Aloysius and Crystal Lil Binewski come up with a plan that will save them and thtravelingling freak show. They create their own freaks by having the beautiful Lily ingests arsenic, insecticides, illicit drugs and eventually radioisotopes. Their children are born with a series of abnormalities that make them the greatest attractions the Fabulon has seen and they'’re made to earn their keep as mere babes. Even the couples failures are moneymakers in the a museum filled with jars of mistakes’ made as Mama and Papa Binewski experimented. The insulated family dynamic centers on making as much money as possible from circus visitors by constantly topping what has been done before.

Arturo the Aqua-Boy excels at manipulating his audience and is viscously jealous if pianist Siamese twins Electra and Iphigenia make more than he does. When Fortunato, also called the Chick, is born, he is almost abandoned when he is almost mistaken for normal. It is quickly clear what fantastic ability the small boy baby possesses. Narrated by Olympia Binewski a bald, humpbacked albino dwarf considered too unremarkable to perform, the raw power of her obsessive love for Arty drives her to commit deeds inconceivable in our world. The story is split between Oly describing her hard-working upbringing and of her life after the circus as she keeps watch over a mostly normal daughter she loves with everything she has left.

This bold, compelling novel has been erected on the barren ground outside of town where most dare not go. Once you'’ve paid for your ticket and entered the Binewski world, you have already begun a journey that will leave you affected and transformed. This story is riveting and disturbing, darkly funny and macabre, illusory and painfully human. Oly's narrative is engrossing and it is clear she has no moral dilemmas in her twisted world. Dunn extracts compassion and abhorrence with her characters that is almost confrontational. Something in them speaks to the freak in us all. When the lights come back up and you stumble out of the big top, the sun will seem too bright and you'’ll find sawdust in your shoes.