Lake Overturn

by Vestal McIntyre

Book Overview

"Striking.... An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre has done it for all of his." --New York Times Book Review

"I felt as if I were reading a modern-day Middlemarch." -- Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man

A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle's Ferro-Grumley Award, Lake Overturn is the stirring debut novel of small-town America...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061671266
• ISBN13: 9780061671265
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Best Novel so far this Year.

Please so not judge this novel by this ugly green jacket, explained in the book, because you could miss the best novel so far this year. If you remember Richard Russo's Empire Falls and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Lake Overturn is the same idea of well told story with great characters that never feel fake. The details are vivid and the feeling sincere. I found the conclusion surprising and moving. Move well beyond the vampire novels and see the talent McIntyre has.

Thoroughly Enjoyable!

I loved this book. The characters are so well created and portrayed that I couldn't help but get drawn into their lives. I thought this book would take me a month or so to get through and I finished it in 3 days. Thoroughly engrossing and definitely worth your time.

Spot On View of Small Town America

Vestal McIntyre's sometimes touchingly funny, sometimes heartbreaking view of residents of a small Idaho town (could be any small town America)provided an achingly realistic porait of a variety of characters as they live their everyday lives in the "quiet despiration" that is so much of our existance. These are characters that you will know - dealing with the same drives and pulls, acomplishments and frustrations that we live with everyday. Some succumb to the smallest temptations - some triumph over the biggest obsticles. Vestal deals gently with them all - from the teenage daughter helping her mother die with some dignity to the drug addict who tries to find a place to belong by being a surrogate mother.

A vivid, multifaceted tale of small town America

Vestal McIntyre's debut novel, Lake Overturn, is a vivid, multifaceted tale of small town America. Set in Eula, Idaho, the story's title comes from a real scientific phenomenon that occurred in a lake in Africa in the 1980s that killed thousands of people nearby. Two of the novel's young characters, Gene and Enrique, tackle the Lake Nyos disaster for a science project, trying to figure out exactly what happened. I won't get into exactly what lake overturn is (assuming, like me, you didn't already know), but the catastrophic phenomenon works on many levels for this story. The event itself is a good starting point, especially where Enrique and Gene are concerned, but the title as a metaphor sums up the book in a unique way. As we get drawn into the lives of other Eula residents, we see that things are not always as they seem. With characters at very different crossroads of their lives, it's interesting to see what bubbles to the surface. Wanda, a youngish woman, struggles with addiction as she tries to drown out the horrible events of her past. She decides to turn her life around by becoming a surrogate mother, thinking she's finally found her salvation. Lina and Connie, both single mothers (of Enrique and Gene, respectively) live beside each other in a trailer park. Both face their own challenges with loneliness and new awakenings, whether it be an affair with a married man or a crush on a pastor. Liz and Abby, best friends, can't wait to graduate high school and leave all their "stupid" Eula towns folks behind. They both end up distracted from their plans, however, when Liz is suddenly pursued by a secret admirer and Abby faces the death of her mother. Other characters come into play, and each segment is almost like its own little story, broken up and spread throughout the book. In lesser hands, Lake Overturn could have turned out quite messy with so much going on (especially since the story is told from so many perspectives), but McIntyre manages to weave a classic tale that will leave you breathless by the final pages. It's amazing how so many larger issues - racism, homosexuality, death of a loved one, religion, extramarital affairs, addiction, isolation - are touched on in some way, yet the novel works as one coherent whole. Vestal McIntyre is an author to look out for, and I can't wait to read any of his future work.

"All the Lonely People"

Mcintyre, Vestal. "Lake Overturn: A Novel", Harper, 2009. "All the Lonely People" Amos Lassen Vestal McIntyre looks at small town America in "Lake Overturn" and he knows the town of Eula, Idaho and its residents well. Eula is a town of churches and mighty Oaks, of boxy homes and blue skies and fields of grain. It is a Republican enclave where there has never been a battle or a calamity or a disaster. The residents are real and interesting and complex, they have troubled hearts and McIntyre knows each of them. Two single mothers, Connie and Lina live as neighbors in the town's trailer park. Lina is the daughter of Mexican migrant farm workers who is having trouble with her teenaged son Jesus who has returned to live with her after having been a foster child with wealthy white foster parents. Connie was abandoned long ago and spends time struggling with Old Testament laws against remarriage. This becomes even more difficult for her when a handsome missionary visits her church. She has a maladjusted son, Gene who loves science and suffers cruel treatment on the schoolyard. Gene and Enrique, Lina's other son, are determined to win the school science fair and they build a project which is about "lake overturn" which is a real scientific event in which deadly gases collect and then erupt from the depths of the lake. They want to know if such an event could harm Eula and in doing their research they meet a strange group of people who live there. These include a woman who is suffering from an abusive past as well as from addiction, the high school principal who is weak but has lofty ambitions, a lawyer who cheats on his wife as his wife is dying of cancer. All the people share one thing--lonely lives. Enrique is a young homosexual who lives in the closet and Gene is a high functioning autistic kid who obsesses over what happened in Africa and this ultimately causes a rift in his friendship with Enrique. Connie also has tremendous guilt feelings about thinking about the new missionary and she feels that she is cheating on her missing spouse. Lina has been having an affair with a married client. "Lake Overturn" is an expose of small town America and we see that behind the innocence of the town, there is also treachery and secrets. These lonely people live and suffer together. There are also other characters that are lonely as well and everyone has a need to connect with someone else but need to do something and strength to do something are two different things. The focus of the book is how far a lonely person will go to find some kind of friendship. There are many surprises but for me the biggest surprise of all is how beautifully this book is written. It is a first novel that reads like the work of an established author. Mcintyre has a talent for detail and he is able to enter our hearts.