Geek Love

The book Geek Love is about the jealousy and hate that can grow when you have a competitive family. This book was defiantly like nothing I have ever read before. The selfish and truly horrible person that Arturo the oldest creation of Aloysius and Lillian Binewski is continues to shock me. He ruined the lives of anyone that threatened him in even the slightest way. He has a control over the main character Olympia that can't quite be explained, but it seems that no matter how horrible he is to her or what terrible things he does to the people around her, that she loves him unconditionally. The entire time while reading the book you want the character to stop loving Arturo.

Electra and Inphigenia are the Siamese twin sisters of Olympia and Arturo. They have they're own act and Arturo ultimately feels threatened by them. When they were 8 and Arturo was 11 he used to make Oly count the ticket sales to make sure that the twins didn't sell more tickets then he did, and when they did he would find ways to improve his act. This was only the beginning of Arturo's jealousy and later hate he had for anyone in his way. When Fortunato was born Lily and Al didn't think that he was anything special. Then 2 weeks later they found out he was telekinetic. When Arturo found out that Fortunato was a telekinetic he tried to murder his 2 weeks old brother by smothering him under a pillow. Oly witnessed all of this but did not do anything because she was afraid of Arturo. Of course this failed because Fortunato was telekinetic and forced Arturo off of him. Arturo finally get rid of Fortunato by hiring a doctor to travel with the circus, this is years later when Fortunato is about 5 or 6. Of course the doctor becomes instantly fascinated by Fortuanto and decides that she wants to study him. She winds up using him to help her with surgery and instead of having his own freak show Fortunato becomes a skilled surgeon.

This leaves the twins for Arturo to deal with. When they are around 17 they start to prostitute themselves is when they get pregnant Arturo doesn't let them kill the pregnancy. When they try and sneak to a clinic to get an abortion Arturo catches them and locks them in their trailer for the 2 years that they carry the baby. After they have the baby they try and do their act again, but Arturo stops them by making the doctor separate them. The operation is a failure and doesn't separate them but disables Electra from even functioning in any way. While this is going on Arturo has started a cult and gets many many fans of his circus act to amputate their limbs and give him money. These are a few examples of his control on people and his ability to destroy the lives of anyone he feels threatened by.

After Arturo disables Electra Fortunato and Inphigenia try and bring her back. When they finally do Electra goes crazy and murders they're son Mumpo with a pair of scissors. Then Electra and Inphigenia stab each other to death with scissors. Ater witnessing this Fortunato goes into such a state of pain and shock that he sets the circus on fire killing everyone.

This is one of my favorite books of all time and really have to read the entire thing to  understand what a truly horrible person Arturo is and how everything he does was to destroy the lives of his siblings.