7 Novels About Brilliant Freaks

As a queer girl growing up in small-town Scotland, I’ve always been attracted to stories about characters who don’t fit in. Better yet: those whose strangeness is their source of power. 

My debut novel, Freakslaw, opens with an epigraph from The Craft: “We are the weirdos, mister.” It’s what one of the teen girl witches says to the bus driver, when he tries to warn them to be careful of any peculiar types that lurking in the woods. That line has always stuck with me. In a world that’s terrified of outsiders and encourages normalcy at every turn, what does it mean to align yourself with the freaks from the outset?

Freakslaw tells the story of a traveling funfair whose inhabitants are all misfits of one kind or another, and take great joy in being so. Whenever the world rankles at their existence, they refuse to make themselves smaller. 

When I wrote this book, I wanted to talk about the ways in which difference is not something to be overcome—smoothed out and shaped into a more palatable form—but itself a source of triumph and thriving. As the narrator of freakdom bible Geek Love makes clear: 

“You must have wished a million times to be normal.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’ve wished I had two heads. Or that I was invisible. I’ve wished for a fish’s tail instead of legs. I’ve wished to be more special.”

“Not normal?”

“Never.”

Here are 7 novels about brilliant freaks:

Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis

It’s November 2008 when the monster dogs arrive in Manhattan by helicopter. Biomechanically engineered by a mad Prussian surgeon, these dogs walk upright, dine with silver cutlery balanced in their prosthetic hands, and talk intelligently through mechanical voice boxes. They are deeply uncanny, but New York has always been a city that embraces oddballs, and so the monster dogs quickly become reluctant celebrities, appearing on chat shows and hosting lavish balls. The story is told through various forms: newspaper articles, diary entries, even an opera libretto. I didn’t know I needed to read an opera written by a dog until I got my hands on this bizarre and brilliant novel, but I did, and so do you. It is perfect in every way. 

The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim, translated by Sean Lin Halbert

A lizard grows like a weed in a girl’s mouth, eventually replacing her tongue. A father of five survives on a diet of glass and only glass (his favorite kind is crystal). Then there are the doppelgängers, who show up in their counterparts’ lives, causing all kinds of mayhem. Records of these peculiar humans—known as “symptomers”—are filed in a seemingly-ordinary office block in Seoul, in Cabinet 13. We learn their stories through the eyes of harried office worker Kong Deok-geun, who believes they may represent the emergence of a new species. Though Kong approaches his work with a kind of exasperated disdain, the ultimate feeling you come away with is one of utter delight at all the possibilities for strangeness in the world. 

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

When Santiago dies at eleven years old, his mother is “not done with her son, not yet ready to hand him away.” So, acting upon the instruction of a Mexican folk tale, she cuts out a piece of his lung and nurses it until it gains sentience. Thus Monstrilio is brought to life: a furred, carnivorous lump, dragging himself around by the arm-tail, as he gradually grows into the man Santiago will never become. Despite Monstrilio’s bitey tendencies, his family—both biological and chosen—continue to accept him no matter what. This book is queer, gory, and packed with unconditional love.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

Theo—a horny surfer-bro merman who loves hanging out on the rocks at Venice Beach—appears in Lucy’s life at the point where she’s almost hit rock bottom. Her boyfriend has dumped her, her dissertation is going nowhere, and the only distraction she can find is from dreadful Tinder dates proposing anal in hotel lobby bathrooms. In this weird, grubby, fantastical novel, it’s Theo’s inhumanness that sets him apart from other men and in so doing offers Lucy an opportunity to escape the anxieties of modern life. Things go increasingly off the rails, of course, but in the meantime Broder makes fucking a merman sound like so much fun.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

There’s a myth about a tiger spirit called Hu Gu Po, who lives in a woman’s body and hungers to eat children’s toes. Soon after being told this story, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail of her own. In coming to terms with her new form, she has to excavate her family history, and the violence and secrets that lie therein. K-Ming Chang is also a poet and her sentences are the kind of thing you want to tattoo on your heart. A combination of Taiwanese folklore, grotesque bodily functions and queer redemption, Bestiary is like nothing else I’ve ever read.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

The mother at the center of Nightbitch has given up her art career and much of her identity for the past two years to stay home and care for her child. But things are beginning to change. Her canines are growing and sharpening, and there’s a thick new patch of hair on the back of her neck—signs of the essentially feral and freakish self she’s tried to repress. Everything becomes more interesting as she increasingly gives space to her gleeful dog impulses, casting off the woman the patriarchy says she should be, and making room for her alter ego Nightbitch instead. This book is a celebration of living unapologetically—a deranged manual for subverting the pressures and expectations of motherhood, and coming back to yourself.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The quintessential freak show novel, Geek Love is the story of a traveling carnival family who go to the ultimate lengths to rescue their failing business. During her pregnancies, Crystal Lil Binewski imbibes all manner of drugs and exposes herself to radiation in an attempt to alter her children’s genes. Her resulting offspring are Arturo the Aquaboy, with his flippers for limbs; the dreamy conjoined pair, Iphy and Elly; hunchbacked albino narrator, Oly; and telekenetic Chick. Dunn’s fierce affection for her complex, multifaceted characters oozes from every page and what could, in other hands, feel exploitative and prurient becomes a love letter to uniqueness. Read it and you’ll never want to be ordinary again.