Cover of Geek Love

Geek Love

  • 1989 first published
  • 355 pages
  • ★ 4.3 (7 ratings)
  • 9 editions

Katherine Dunn's Geek Love (1989) is a circus fiction novel. It deals with carnival owners, monsters, family and families.

Open Library readers give it an average of 4.3 out of 5 from 7 ratings, and 131 more have it on their want-to-read list. It has been published in 9 editions.

It runs to roughly 355 pages — 6–7 hours of reading at an average pace.

About Geek Love

Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac 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.
Description from Open Library

Awards & lists

Themes, setting & tropes

Genres

Subjects

  • Carnival owners
  • Monsters
  • Family
  • Families
  • Circus performers
  • Freak shows
  • Sagas

Quick answers

Who wrote Geek Love?

Geek Love was written by Katherine Dunn and first published in 1989.

What genre is Geek Love?

It is usually shelved as Circus & Carnival.

How long is Geek Love?

The median edition has 355 pages, about 6–7 hours of reading at 250 words per minute.

What books are similar to Geek Love?

Readers who like it often enjoy Under the Lilacs, The Kite Rider and A Living Nightmare... (Cirque Du Freak #1).

More by Katherine Dunn

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  • Cover of Nightmare Carnival

    Nightmare Carnival

    Ellen Datlow, Katherine Dunn

    2014

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