Geek Love

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of incest, body horror, abuse, ableism, suicide, and assault. 

A major theme of the novel is the importance of the family. The Binewskis are a tight-knit family, basically just having each other as they travel from town to town with the Fabulon. Family for the Binewskis, especially Lil, even includes the dead babies in the jars in the Chute and Grandpa Binewski’s ashes in the urn bolted to the generator truck. In the opening chapter of the book, we see Al is the patriarch and driving force of the family, and his decision to custom-make his children is like Athena springing forth from the head of Zeus. Lil is the quiet strength of the family, slowly poisoning and addicting herself to the noxious elements that she takes for the sake of producing her “special” children. The children do not feel the need to seek out friends outside of their own family. Oly recalls: “And we would all be cozy in the warm booth of the van, eating popcorn and drinking cocoa and feeling like Papa’s roses” (10). The family’s relationships to each other evolve as the story goes on, with Al and Lil being less and less in charge, but the lives of the Binewskis are inexorably tied together to the very end.