Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out-with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes- to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-and dangerous-asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

A truly very odd story. I'm not really sure what to say, but if you're a sensitive reader, I'd give this book a skip. It is definitely interesting from a cult perspective although some bits (like Oly's conception) that are just downright peculiar. And the story comes together is a bit of an odd fashion, Oly remembers her history as her present (about as bizarre as her past too) unfolds. This is not for your average fiction reader ...

FYI. Before you get confused between our current term for Geek, as in someone typically obsessed with computers, and what exactly they could possibly have to do with circuses, here's the alternate definition:
"a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken."

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