Resumo de Geek Love - Katherine Dunn

Delve into the intriguing and freakish world of the Binewski?s, a carnival family that traveled across the country to display the strange, the incredible, and the weird?with the main attractions being the Binewski children. Always looking for the next mystifying act, Al and Crystal Lil decided to breed their own brand of bizarre attractions. Through the help of arsenic, insecticides, and various other drugs, the family and the carnival expanded with the editions of Arturo the Aqua Boy (born with flippers instead of arms and legs); Electra and Iphigenia, Siamese twins with two torsos, one set of legs, and wonderful singing voices; Olympia, an albino dwarf with a hump; and Futuro, otherwise known as Chick, who used his telekinetic powers for anesthesia and impregnation, among other things. Sadly, not all of the Binewski offspring lived long enough to achieve their own show, but the ?special? ones continued to do their part for the carnival displayed in formaldehyde jars in ?the Chute.?
The story is told by Oly who, as the least magnificent of the children, worked more behind the scenes of the carnival than in front, although she did possess a strong speaking voice and introduced Aqua Boy for all of his shows. Oly describes the life of living and working in a carnival: the jealous grip Arty developed on every aspect of the family business and his cult following, her sisters? promiscuous lifestyle, little Chick?s big role in the realm of surgery, the disintegration of her parents, and the eventual downfall of nearly everyone and everything close to her. Various other characters are introduced throughout the book as well, such as Dr. P, a surgeon who, with the assistantance of Chick, helped Arty's followers achieve the dream of "being like Aqua Boy"--i.e. cutting off their appendages finger by finger, calf by calf, until they were merely a torso. There was also the fascinated reporter, Norval Sanderson, who followed the "Aurturism" phenomenon for years until he eventually joined and created his own booth at the carnival selling the fingers and toes of Aurturans; and the Bag Man, who had failed at his attempt to shoot the Binewski's outside a shopping center, failed in his attempt to shoot himself and ended up disfigured, became Arty's devoted peon, and impregnated the twins. As one can see, Arty had his fins in nearly everything.
There is another storyline in the book that is set in "present" time and follows the life of Olympia McGurk (actually Oly, the albino dwarf) and her careful watch over her daughter, Miranda. Miranda was the child of Oly and Arty, though it was Chick who used his abilities to inseminate Oly. While Miranda was born with a tiny tail, her father did not deem it special enough for the carnival and forced Oly to allow a nunnery to raise her baby. When Miranda was old enough for college, Oly arranged for her to live in the same apartment house, which allowed Oly to watch her beloved daughter more closely.
At first Oly kept her distance and merely followed Miranda, to class, to work at an exotic dance club. Eventually, Miranda was the one who sought out Oly, wanting to befriend her and use her as a subject in her artistic endeavors. Oly soon discovered Miranda was offered a proposition to have her tail removed, all expenses paid, by a woman named Miss Lick. Determined not to let her daughter become a "norm," Oly sought out the rich and intriguing businesswoman in order to stop her. Depsite her mission, Oly came to admire the fascinating obsession of Miss Lick to transform beautiful girls into less attractive specimens in order to allow them to utilize the talents of their minds rather than their bodies. Still, Oly's love for her daughter and her individuality were much more important and she completed what she set out to do, though her life was sacrificed as well.

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