book:geek love by katherine dunn review: this is a very bizarre and intriguing book. The family of circus freaks, created to be so by their wacky, clueless parents (drawn to each other by their interest in biting the heads off of live chickens, a.k.a. geeking), is filled with interesting characters, all of whom dunn does a great job of developing. The fin-boy brother will stay in my brain forever, I think, as the epitome of manipulative and repulsive people who are also bizarrely sexy. (you have to read the book to believe what I’m saying, really.) I loved reading this book and could not get enough. But when the fat, wealthy woman looking to pay for freaks’ surgeries to become “normal” entered the picture, I was a little put off, wondering where this was going to go and whether it’d be worth it. after all, I was much more into hearing about the history of the family than the current state of the gorgeous, almost-normal child of the narrator (she’s so lame!). my foresight was dead on, as the final 40 pages were so damn awful and disappointing. As if dunn was just trying to wrap it up, and she did but with a stupidly showy and simplistic finale. I just want to go back to the spot in the book right before that happened and ask her to try a different, and much longer, ending, just so I can keep reading. Because before that, this book was among the best I’d ever read.
