Gooble Gobble! Gooble Gobble! Read This Book! Read This Book!

Ahh, the holidays! The time each year when we are subjected to the various horrifying whims of our extended family. Smelly babies. Old people asking us hypothetical questions about why teenagers today listen to that ‘rap music’ and act like whores. I don’t know, Great Aunt Mildred. I’m twenty-seven, and have poor social skills. Even as a young person myself, I had no idea what was going on.

Well, it could be worse. Instead of having a family full of freaks, you could be a family of actual freaks, like with extra or missing limbs, maybe some animal parts, extraneous hair, possibly a penchant for shoving flaming or pointy objects down your gullet.

That is exactly the sort of family imagined in Katherine Dunn’s novel “Geek Love.” I really wonder how many people in the past couple years have picked up her book and thought, “Yippee! Nerd romance!” Not quite, termite. Here’s a little etymology lesson for you. The original meaning of the word geek, according to Merriam Webster, is a carnival performer, usually billed as a wild man, whose act was to bite the head off of a live chicken or snake. Perhaps Katherine Dunn was worried readers would get the wrong idea if they saw a book titled “Freak Love” and therefore dredged up this antiquated term to fill in the blank. Because freaks, after all, are what this book is about. Freaks in love with other freaks, living normal freaky lives, despite looking positively freakish.

Dunn need not have worried. This was one of those books where someone simply tells me the premise and I buy it. What’s that you say? A book about circus freaks? I’m there! I think every reader has that list of certain words, that when they see it on a book dust jacket, their interest is instantly piqued. Well, circus is one of my words. Pair that with ‘haunted’ or ‘evil’ or ‘necromancer’ and not only have I bought the book, but I’ve read half of it in line already on the way to the cashier. I admit, it’s not a fool proof plan, a point never made more clearly than with Jonathan L. Howard’s “Johannes Cabal: Necromancer.” Never have I read a book with necromancer in the title so utterly devoid of necromancy. For shame, Mr. Howard. For shame.

As I mentioned before, “Geek Love” is a simple story about a family, with the same boring hopes and dreams as everybody else. The story starts with a loving couple; he the inheritor of a rundown traveling show, she the resident geek girl. Yup, the chicken head biting kind. They fall in love, and like every young couple in love, they purposely expose her pregnant belly to toxic chemicals in the hopes of producing better acts for their circus. And it works! A couple years later, they’ve got a megalomaniac flipper boy, a sassy and musically gifted pair of conjoined twins, and Olympia, a moody, angst-filled bald girl with a hunchback. Oh, and a perfectly lovely blond boy with telekinetic powers. He has an inferiority complex because he’s the most adorable and flawless looking child ever birthed.

I’m worried this sounds like a bad review. It’s a bizarre read, to be sure, but I really, really loved it. I consumed it in its entirety on a four hour plane ride, so that has to count for something. Those folks who recall the short-lived HBO show “Carnival” will likely enjoy its diverse and intriguing cast of characters. It might also put you in mind of the 1932 film “Freaks,” only not quite as visually horrifying.

What I loved most about “Geek Love” was how the family of freaks, especially Olympia, who is considered too boring by her parents to be put in any act, deals with the same issues as any regular, traditional looking family. At times, they were so normal in their arguments, their emotional blow ups, their backstabbing and scheming,. Then they’d start in on the telekinetic powers and cult religions and journey off down some tangential road that would zap me back to fantasyland.

I can safely say, “Geek Love” is a book the likes of which you have probably not seen. Unless you’re also in the habit of finding the weirdest book in the store and reading it forthwith. In that case, we should hang out.