Ms. Hen reviews GEEK LOVE

GEEK LOVE

Katherine Dunn

1989

Vintage Books

Ms. Hen had read GEEK LOVE previously, many years ago when she was a young graduate student. She was reminded of how much she loved GEEK LOVE when she read WATER FOR ELEPHANTS recently, which is about a circus. GEEK LOVE is about a carnival, and even though there are many similarities between the two novels, there are many differences as well.

This novel is about a family of carnival freaks. Their parents, Crystal Lil and Big Al, decided to experiment with their unborn children because the carnival wasn’t doing so well. Crystal Lil ingested drugs while she was pregnant so she would give birth to abnormal children. The first to survive is Arturo or Arty the Aqua Boy, a fish-like creature. The next to survive are the Siamese twins, Iphy and Elly, who develop an act playing the piano with four hands. The third is Olympia, the novel's narrator, an albino hunchbacked dwarf, and she isn’t really freakish enough for the family, but since they lost so many children, they decided to keep her. The next, and last child is Fortunato, commonly known as Chick; he appears to be completely normal, but has psychic powers.

When Ms. Hen first read this novel, she was struck by how the drama escalated. The reader is brought into a strange world, and it’s acceptable that this world is freaky, but then it gets stranger and stranger and stranger, until it explodes. Ms. Hen thinks this novel is a great example of how to create a bizarre world, then to heighten the drama.

This time, when she read GEEK LOVE, she noticed how the novel talks a lot about beauty, and whether or not it’s necessary, and if a beautiful woman is hindered by her looks, if it’s possible that could prevent her from being a success in life. Between Arty’s show, transforming people into freaks, and Miss Lick, taking attractiveness away from women, Ms. Hen stopped to think about what it truly means to look beautiful and normal, and how it affects a person’s life. Ms. Hen appears to be a normal hen, but deep inside she is not a norm. Ms. Hen likes to look normal, but she doesn’t know what it’s like to be damaged on the outside.

Ms. Hen remembered before she reread this novel that the word “geek” means biting off the heads of live chickens. She is frightened by this, but fascinated at the same time. There are several mentions of chickens and hens in this novel, especially due to the meaning of the word geek. Crystal Lil was a talented geek in her day, but Al didn’t want her to ruin her teeth, even though he thought an attractive geek would be an asset to the show. He considered other people for geeks, “I couldn’t ask Horst the Cat Man, because he was a vegetarian to begin with, and his dentures would disintegrate the first time the hit a chicken neck anyhow.” It makes Ms. Hen sad to imagine chickens being eaten alive, but she knows they’re eaten many different ways, and it’s a carnival, so it makes the process more magical than disgusting.

One of the wonderful aspects of this novel is the language in which it is written. The narrator has a unique voice, and when Ms. Hen read this, she knew she was reading a writer who is a master. Ms. Hen recommends GEEK LOVE for your Halloween haunting reading, or anytime to escape into a dark, mysterious, humorous and unique world.