That's a good point about Olympia being an adolescent for most of the story. I've been forgetting that when evaluating her decisions, and it certainly brings her character into better focus. True, she's still crazy and spineless, but her being TEENAGED, crazy and spineless makes more sense to me.

Liking Characters
Tasha, you write that "I had a serious ongoing problem with my inability to relate to or care for the characters."

I second that motion.

I never heard of the book before the AVClub recommendation. When Geek Love was published, I was but a wee lad.

Chick is perhaps the most tragic character in the whole book. Kid has all the power in the world except the power to make his family love him. He's too young (or stupid) to realize he's only appreciated when he's being useful, and he's too young (or gentle) to tell them to fuck off.

I often wondered what Olympia must have looked like to the other characters in the book. It is true that Olympia's perspective leaves a gigantic blind spot: herself. Still, for my money, I imagine that she must come across as quite repugnant, considering her actions throughout the book.

Arturo, backtracking to your question regarding Chick sparing Oly's life:

Arturo, having been home-schooled as a youngster, and having known many other home-schooled kids, I can definitely proclaim that home-schooling's insular nature can give you a pretty damn imbalanced world view. However, I must say that I find calling Geek Love a treatise against home schooling to be like calling…

The Binewski carnival certainly gives a license for "norm" characters to indulge the more "depraved" sides of their nature. I mean, Horst first shows up hoping to sell Arty his bizaare auto-erotic invention, Norval finally finds a place where noone gives a shit that he's lost his testicles, as well as a society where…

Please god, please no Tim Burton adaptation. If I live to see Johnny Depp as Arturo the Aqua Boy, I'm going to have to choke a bitch.

Here's a question for the group: Is the freak-show concept and the main characters' various physical abnormalities merely a storytelling hook on Dunn's part to get us to accept the stultifying psychological parade of horrors that this book really is?

Logostician, I really like your picking up the thread running from Al's Rose-garden experiments on his children to Arty's Arturian surgeries demanded of his flock.
I agree that Dunn deliberately begins her novel with the rose-garden story, which is innocuous, to lead into the "cultivation" of the Binewski children,…

Plus, Dunn lives and works in Portland, Oregon. That isn't as conclusive as the items cited by other people above, but it would explain why Dunn chooses Portland as the city where the Binewski train finally comes to a stop.

True. In any other book, telekinetic secret semen transfers would be the height of horror, but here, it is a welcome respite.

"In that sense it is clearly a rejection of norm society, and a willed dependence."

Yeah, that's a good call on that scene, Rishi. Al refusing to save his daughters from the Bag Man stands out to me as perhaps the most reprehensible moment in the whole book.

I was expecting some horrible scene of Arturo raping Olympia, but this turned out to be the one instance where the book took the gentle way out.

The novel opens with Al and Lily romantically reminiscing about her geek act, and the novel's description of bones crunching into chicken necks has an almost sexual intensity. The relationship between Geek-and-chicken is intimate, intense and horribly destructive, which is exactly how the Binewskis are with each other.

Chick was definitely one of the better characters in the book, especially since he's the only family member operating from an inherent sense of love and selflessness. Again, his transition from christ-figure to walking-atom-bomb-of-fury-christ-figure was so abrupt, it cheated the wonderful buildup he'd been getting…

While certain elements of the novel felt just right (we really do get to hear a lot about Arturism, and Elly and Iphy have one of the best dynamics in the book), I couldn't help feeling that the wheels started coming off in the last 100 pages. Characters like Norval and McGurk get introduced and recede almost…