Lake Overturn Book

We have a modern literary epidemic, admit it. Symptoms include apathetic narrators, shorter novels, yawn-inducing stories of the ultra-rich, unsympathetic characters, and the same old drivel about ultra hip city life. The cure is Vestal McIntyre, taking us back to a time when penicillin cured everything and characters were substantial, interesting, and freakishly relatable. Maybe I tire of a rich girl crisis or Sex and the City escapism, but for some reason, "Lake Overturn" was a big glass of water in a room full of stale Red Bull.

As mentioned in the summary, it's small town Idaho in the 80's. The connecting thread throughout the varied character stories is the idea of actual lake overturn: a natural disaster where carbon dioxide erupts from deep lake water and poses a deadly threat to anyone living in the vicinity. Metaphorically, all of McIntyre's characters are also ready to explode. We have Gene (doing a science fair project on lake overturn), his fundamentalist single-mom Connie, his best friend Enrique, Enrique's housekeeping mother Lina, bus drivers, brothers, aspiring surrogate mother Wanda, and even more than these. McIntyre juggles every chainsaw perfectly, there is no need to make character notes in the margins. I found that there were of course characters I liked reading about more than others (Connie and Wanda were faves), but on the whole, the book is well balanced, and of course the holy grail for me: well paced.

Aside from being excellent literary fiction, "Lake Overturn" reminds me of why I love books by Anthony Trollope, "War and Peace", and the lengthy like. We have so much room to see all of characters grow in a filled-out novel; nothing is sliced and diced like a skinny Palahniuk salad. I prefer my novels to be filling and satisfying, thank you. And McIntyre is a strangely poetic writer, in spite of Idaho and the curse of describing a small town; and also an unbiased and a fantastic narrator of the different faiths, sexualities, and preferences of each character. I have to say, this book gets the big slow clap from me.

Recommended like crazy,

EZ Read Staffer Jenifer