This was a different kind of book. I didn't quite catch when exactly this took place, but nowadays it would have been mighty suspect for a family to have 4 deformed children. The mother purposely took drugs, exposed herself to chemicals - anything to have deformed babies in order to save their circus. They'd have their built-in freak show. And they did. And yet they seemed to be a close family notwithstanding Siamese twins that shared one body, a boy with flippers for arms and legs, an albino dwarf with a hump...It was inevitable that they would finally come to the attention of the media. It was an interesting read.

Nwpassage won this from me in a swap, so it's now on its way to her.

Arrived today, thanks so much! TBR

From the front cover:

GEEK LOVE
KATHERINE DUNN
NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

"REMARKABLE... A STRIKING PIECE OF FICTION." -- Chicago Sun-Times

From the back cover:

"PAGE AFTER PAGE SHE SHOCKS US.... A FELLINI MOVIE IN INK." -- San Francisco Chronicle

Author Katherine Dunn -- who has always chosen the unconventional in her own life as the daughter of migrant farm workers, a teen runaway, a boxing stringer for Associated Press, and an award-winning novelist -- now brings us one of the decade's most controversial books: a literary sensation taht is a work of daring, brilliance, and unrelenting shock.

GEEK LOVE is the story of a carnival family, the Binewskis, who save their traveling "Carnival Fabulon" from bankruptcy by giving birth to fabulous freaks -- the children born to Lil Binewski after she ingests drugs, insecticides, arsenic, radioisotopes, anything to make her babies more "special". The result is a world readers have never entered before, a place of horror and humor, where vengeance and love are realized in unimaginable ways. And where some unforgettable "Ripley's Believe It or Not" characters are both exotically unique -- and hauntingly, chillingly, just like us.

"LIKE MOST GREAT NOVELS, THIS ONE KEEPS THE READER MARVELING AT THE DARING OF THE AUTHOR. Geek Love may offend; it may repulse; in doing so, however, it speaks to what it means to be human." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"WONDERFULLY DESCRIPTIVE.... the comic exploration of the peculiar... gives Geek Love its main success: that an Ms. Dunn's tremendous imagination." -- New York Times Book Review

SELECTED BY THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB AND THE QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB

Mailed last Tuesday to indygo88, who won this in my International RABCK Contest on BookObsessed. Enjoy!

What a great surprise -- a whole big batch of books! I've been looking for this one in particular for a while. A big THANK YOU to you, nwpassage! :')

I picked this book up (almost 10 years ago now) after hearing good things, not really knowing what it was about. You see the title and, in my case, imagine something along the lines of a couple of awkward, geeky teenagers falling in love. Well, no. Even after reading the book description and thinking that you might have an idea of what you're in for, you'd be mistaken. In truth, this is a story about a carnival family, but not just any carnival family. This family is one that purposely strives to procreate "freakish" children -- those with physical or other undefinable deformities -- and where having a "normal" child would not be acceptable.

I still am not sure how I feel about this book. I alternated between laughing, being awestruck, and being truly horrified by some of the things happening in this story. Just when I thought I couldn't be shocked any more, something even more shocking would occur. I thought about bailing on this one a few times, but ultimately I wanted to know how it would all end, so I kept reading. It is almost certainly one of the oddest books I have ever read. It seems to have a certain cult following, which I get, and some readers will love it, but I can't say that it's necessarily in my wheelhouse. However, it's certainly unique and would spur some interesting conversation and discussion.

Sending off to PBS member. Enjoy! :')

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