Geek Love
Warning: This book is not for everyone.
Before I give my opinion on this book, let me explain to you (in the easiest way possible) the synopsis of this book:
Geek Love is about the Binewski Family. The parents meet at Big Al's carnival and Al and Lily fall in love. Lil happens to be the 'geek' at the time which, for those of you who don't know, is not a nerd; it's the person in the carnival that bites off the head of the chicken. Well, they decide it would be easier to raise a family of carnival freaks than to pay people.
They successfully birth four children - five, depending on how you look at it.
The eldest is Arty, a boy with fins for hands and feet who is self-obsessed as well as power-hungry and will stop at nothing to be the number one of the carnival. Then there are the Siamese-twins, Iphy and Elly, different in every way possible, yet still connected at the hip (literally). Next is Oly, the albino hunchback who happens to be our narrator. She is in love and obsessed with Arty. She cares very deeply for her family. Because we see their world through her eyes, the reader (at least I did) grows to see it as normalcy.
Last, but certainly not least, we have Chic. He at first seems like a 'norm' but right before they almost give him away, they discover his powerful ability to control things with his mind. Chic is enduring in every way possible and is forced to grow up too quickly with the family he was born in to.
Geek Love was intense, daring and brilliant. While I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, I feel privileged to have read such a masterpiece. There were a few things I didn't understand, like changing from first person to third person on the same page and calling the characters different names within the same sentence (example: Lily and Crystal Lil). There were some parts that were hard for me to read (like when they considered getting rid of Chic because he wasn't different) and the family is -let's just say it- f***ed up.
There was another part of the book explaining, in conjunction with the children growing up to be adults, what happens to Oly and her daughter. I didn't really like reading those chapters because they were told completely different; it was unlike story-time and more like details of things I wasn't sure why I should care about.
I must admit that I liked the beginning of the novel better than the middle and end; only because I found the 'story-time' stories to be more interesting. There was a thought process involved and reasons for things that happened and as the book progressed the reader learned about characters that didn't stay throughout the novel. I ended up missing the small characters that I felt could have been worth more than a small chapter.
I don't want to give anything more away. I do think that it's a worthwhile read and this is the type of book I would (surprisingly) rather read in class so I could have a teacher explain to me some of the literary reasons the author took the story in certain direction (that won't make any sense until you read it!).
Rating: 3 out of 5 goats.
