Author: Katherine Dunn
Pages: 12 discs
Genre: Fiction
Grade: B
Synopsis: This book is about the Binewski's traveling carnival. The business goes through some rough times and Al Binewski and his wife Crystal Lil begin to experiment with a way to breed their own carnival freak show by having Lil ingest drugs and radioactive elements while she is pregnant. The results are Arturo (the waterboy), a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Electra and Iphigenia, Siamese twins; Olympia, a hunchbacked albino dwarf and the storyteller; and Fortunato a normal looking baby/child with telekinetic powers. This is the story of their life in the carnival and Olympia's life as a radio-host after the carnival has been disbanded.
My Review: This was a bizarre, fascinating and surprising book. There were plenty of instances where you question the judgement of the author and characters in the book because the Binewski's get into some pretty weird stuff. I enjoyed the book because it humanized so many people with disfigurements and it always left me thinking about the situations in the book.
Since January 3, 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment