This audacious, mesmerizing novel should carry a warning: ``Reader Beware.'' Those entering the world of carnival freaks described by narrator Olympia Binewski, a bald, humpbacked albino dwarf, will find no escape from a story at once engrossing and repellent, funny and terrifying, unreal and true to human nature. Dunn's vivid, energetic prose, her soaring imagination and assured narrative skill fuse to produce an unforgettable tale. The premise is bizarre. Art and Lily, owners of Binewski's Fabulon, a traveling carnival, decide to breed their own freak show by creating genetically altered children through the use of experimental drugs. ``What greater gift could you offer your children than an inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves?'' muses Lily. Eventually their family consists of Arty, aka Arturo the Aqua Boy, born with flippers instead of limbs, who performs swimming inside a tank and soon learns how to manipulate his audience; Electra and Iphigenia, Siamese twins and pianists; the narrator, Oly; and Fortunato, also called the Chick, who seems normal at birth, but whose telekinetic powers become apparent just as his brokenhearted parents are about to abandon him. More than anatomy has been altered. Arty is a monsterpower hungry, evil, malicious, consumed by ``dark, bitter meanness and . . . jagged rippling jealousy.'' Yet he has the capacity to inspire adoration, especially that of Oly, who is his willing slave, and who arranges to bear his child, Miranda, who appears ``norm,'' but has a tiny tail. A spellbinding orator, Arty uses his ability to establish a religious cult, in which he preaches redemption through the sacrifice of body partsdigits and limbs.``I want the losers who know they're losers. I want those who have a choice of tortures and pick me.'' This raw, shocking view of the human condition, a glimpse of the tormented people who live on the fringe, makes readers confront the dark, mad elements in every society. After a hiatus of almost two decades, the author of Attic and Truck has produced a novel that everyone will be talking about, a brilliant, suspenseful, heartbreaking tour de force. (Mar . )
Heroic librarians, tarot cards, and being bent into a human pretzel: a night in the life of Erika Swyler, author of “The Book of Speculation”.
The booksellers who select the books we feature in our Discover Great New Writers program love the impossible and the improbable, magical and haunting stories like The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, and The Book of Speculation, by Erika Swyler—and Julia Fine’s incredible debut, What Should Be Wild. Maisie is a girl born with an […]
As I type this, the Schlitterbahn Kansas City Waterpark is building a 17-story, 65-mile-an-hour water slide named Verrückt. Depending on your feelings about waterslides, it’s either going to be a blast or 17-story plummet from hell. Verrückt is German for insane. And let’s be honest: Amusement parks are insane. They’re also the settings for so […]
Today’s cover reveal comes to us once again courtesy of the fine mechanical folks at Angry Robot Books, and it’s definitely one to watch: Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show is a debut fantasy with an irresistible premise: an irreputable doctor on the late 19th century carnival circuit hawks a “cure-all” that does far more than what the […]