In Lake Overturn, McIntyre has created a vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo…[McIntyre has] a real talent for characterization and an ability to capture the dramas lurking beneath Eula's deceptively still waters.
McIntyre's absorbing but flawed debut novel (after the collection You Are Not the One ) opens with a lyrical account of a mysterious event in 1986, when, overnight, all the creatures-animals, insects and 1,700 people-living around Lake Nyos in Cameroon died. In far-off Idaho, two seventh-grade misfits-Enrique, silently coming to terms with his homosexuality, and mildly autistic Gene-decide to report on this event for their science fair project. Eventually, the boys, longtime neighbors and friends, become estranged as Gene fixates on the phenomenon. Meanwhile, Enrique's mother becomes involved with a married man whose house she cleans, and Gene's devoutly religious mother, who considers herself still married to a husband who abandoned her years ago, struggles with her attraction to a new man. McIntyre portrays one year in the life of these and other characters in fictional Eula, Idaho, including Enrique's older brother, a pair of high school students and an unconvincing drug addict who hopes to become a surrogate mother. Each character seeks the love or connection that will counter their loneliness, and while the individual story lines are finely crafted, they fail to add up to a satisfying whole. (May)
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The unusual thing about McIntyre's debut is its division into sections corresponding to the six steps of the scientific method, a structure that gives support to the various stories of Eula, ID, residents in the 1980s. Two adolescent boys are at the center of the story. Gene and Enrique are smart and bookish and perfect misfits in a school full of bullies and mental lightweights. A science fair project dominates their lives; they want to replicate a phenomenon called a lake overturn. At Lake Nyos in Cameroon, unknown gases from the lake floor were released so rapidly that they enveloped surrounding houses and towns within minutes, silently killing thousands of people. Using the scientific method, Gene and Enrique's crude diorama demonstrates how a similar event could happen near Eula at Lake Overlook. Step seven, the presentation, becomes an epilog resolving many of the entanglements that have kept us engrossed from the beginning. Maybe McIntyre is suggesting that life in Eula is one big scientific experiment, but he illuminates with humor and sympathy the mundane lives of group of vivid characters.
A vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo. . . . McIntyre is an honest enough artist that he [is] . . . capable of handling even the most noxious elements when he stirs his American backwater.” — Washington Post
“Striking. . . . An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre...has done it for all of his. It may seem odd praise for a writer, but it’s among the highest: as you drink in this book, you barely notice the words.” — New York Times Book Review
“Lake Overturn is a lovingly rendered portrait of small-town America. Vestal McIntyre knows his people intimately—how they speak, their manners and customs; but, most importantly, he knows their troubled hearts, and he plumbs the depths of those hearts with remarkable empathy and wisdom.” — Ron Rash, author of Serena
“Reading Vestal McIntyre’s deliriously ambrosial novel is like entering reader’s heaven. Constantly surprising. . . . I loved it.” — Peter Cameron, award-winning author of The City of Your Final Destination
“What a great relief [it is] to read Vestal McIntyre’s splendid first novel. . . . Lake Overturn is loving and searing and sad and, above all, a pleasure to read.” — Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not a Stranger Here
“Every character in [Lake Overturn] is so real, complex, and interesting, the scope of the novel at once so wide and so deep, the themes and ideas so thoroughly embodied by the story, I felt as if I were reading a modern-day Middlemarch.” — Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man
“[Keeps] us engrossed from the beginning. . . . He illuminates with humor and sympathy the mundane lives of a group of vivid characters.” — Library Journal
“Richly imagined and fully realized, Overturn has given us what we didn’t know we were waiting for: the next Great Idahoan Novel.” — Out Magazine
“This astonishing novel — a great big captivating, multi-character drama set in Eula, Idaho — has McIntyre juggling a half-dozen intersecting plots and people with extraordinary grace.” — Philadelphia Gay News
“[A] nicely handled exploration of the world’s effect on the tightly woven life of a small town driven by faith.” — Denver Post
“[A] deliriously colorful and deliciously engrossing tapestry of a small-town’s depressing poverty, pointless pettiness, quirky rivalries, domestic infidelities, desperate drug use, onerous class and race divisions – and occasional quiet, sentimental triumphs.” — Q Syndicate
A Best Book of 2009 — Washington Post Book World
Lake Overturn is a lovingly rendered portrait of small-town America. Vestal McIntyre knows his people intimately—how they speak, their manners and customs; but, most importantly, he knows their troubled hearts, and he plumbs the depths of those hearts with remarkable empathy and wisdom.
Striking. . . . An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre...has done it for all of his. It may seem odd praise for a writer, but it’s among the highest: as you drink in this book, you barely notice the words.
New York Times Book Review
A vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo. . . . McIntyre is an honest enough artist that he [is] . . . capable of handling even the most noxious elements when he stirs his American backwater.
What a great relief [it is] to read Vestal McIntyre’s splendid first novel. . . . Lake Overturn is loving and searing and sad and, above all, a pleasure to read.
[A] nicely handled exploration of the world’s effect on the tightly woven life of a small town driven by faith.
Reading Vestal McIntyre’s deliriously ambrosial novel is like entering reader’s heaven. Constantly surprising. . . . I loved it.
Richly imagined and fully realized, Overturn has given us what we didn’t know we were waiting for: the next Great Idahoan Novel.
This astonishing novel — a great big captivating, multi-character drama set in Eula, Idaho — has McIntyre juggling a half-dozen intersecting plots and people with extraordinary grace.
Every character in [Lake Overturn] is so real, complex, and interesting, the scope of the novel at once so wide and so deep, the themes and ideas so thoroughly embodied by the story, I felt as if I were reading a modern-day Middlemarch.
A vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo. . . . McIntyre is an honest enough artist that he [is] . . . capable of handling even the most noxious elements when he stirs his American backwater.
A Best Book of 2009
Washington Post Book World
[A] deliriously colorful and deliciously engrossing tapestry of a small-town’s depressing poverty, pointless pettiness, quirky rivalries, domestic infidelities, desperate drug use, onerous class and race divisions – and occasional quiet, sentimental triumphs.
