"Geeking" a popular carnival attraction in the mid 1900's in America in which a "Geek" would bite off the head of a live chicken. This book is about freaks and norms. Norms in the sense of mores and as a pseudonym for normal people. A young man inherits a family carnival from his father and decides after some hard times that he should start to build or breed his own freaks. He and his wife start experiments in which the mother is subjected to a number of severe drugs, such as cocaine, methadone, heroin, uppers, downers and everything in between while she is pregnant with her children. The children all come out "hideously" deformed and are then trained to become acts in the carnival. The narrative is from the point of view of one of these children.
Every child, since they are growing up in a suitable environment, considers themselves as masterpieces depending on their magnitude of deformation. The narrator is only a dwarfed albino with a hump so she considers herself practically worthless and does chores for the other children who are much more gifted than she. The premise of the story is trying to look at what might hold us back or prevent us from fully enjoying enjoying life. There are two sources of forced deformation presented in the novel. Both are performed surgically. One is performed on people who are deemed too sexual and are wasting their lives fawning over the other sex. They are deformed so that they wont be bothered by their hormones anymore. The other source of deformation is from one the carnival children who encourages people to "become more like him." He is essentially a torso with fins where his arms and legs would be on a "norm." He encourages people to amputate their limbs to be freed from the burden of being able to do things. It really doesn't make all that much sense but it is definitely a plausible cult scenario. It kind of reminds me of part of some eastern religions who preach that our physical bodies are filthy and hold us back and if only we could cultivate only our mind and soul we would reach enlightenment. This sort of just takes what billions of people worldwide believe and exacerbates it. The power struggles in this novel are just fascinating. The character representing the leader of the cult is close to the most interesting. One would suppose that the narrator would be the most intricate, and as I think about it, she certainly has many layers but I think I'm discounting them because many of her layers are so foreign to me. But at the same time her blatant disregard and really ignorance of societal norms may be the most successful aspect of this novel.
Very interesting analysis of human beauty in a way that is a lot less condemning that other, less complete books.
Overall, kind of hard to read, not necessarily a very nice writing style in my opinion, but very inventive and provocative.
6 lizard-children out of 10
Andrew
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