Summer Reading List

Jennifer Weiner picks Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

How to describe Geek Love? It's the story of a family of circus freaks headed up by a matriarch who deliberately ingests poison when she's pregnant so that her kids' resulting deformities will guarantee their lifelong employment. Our heroine, her daughter, is a hunchback albino dwarf named Olympia, and the book details her childhood; her lifelong love affair with her limbless brother Arturo, who forms a cult of voluntary amputees; and her quest to rescue their lovely (but with a little something extra) daughter Miranda from unspeakable peril. Huh. Maybe just say it's a story about a dysfunctional family, the longing for normality and the enduring bond of a mother's love, and tell your friends they won't be sorry.

Weiner's new novel, Best Friends Forever, is out in July