A Best Book of 2009 - Washington Post Book World
“Set in the age of Dallas and Haley’s comet, McIntyre’s striking first novel follows an ensemble cast in Eula, Idaho. . . . McIntyre establishes the idiosyncratic cultures of their minds—their tics and imaginative flights, the bargains they strike with themselves. An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre, who previously published a story collection called You Are Not the One 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] 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
“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.” - Washington Post
“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
“Vestal McIntyre centers his first novel in and around the small, seemingly idyllic town of Eula, Idaho, where all daily life appears to be an open secret. . . . As outsiders, the boys and their mothers become the author’s most effective tools in this nicely handled exploration of the world’s effect on the tightly woven life of a small town driven by faith.” - Denver Post
“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
“[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
“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
“Lake Overturn is such a good novel that I read it as slowly as I could to make it last and hated to see it end. Every character in it 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
“For nearly thirty years now we’ve been told that we are divided by religion and by region – Christian fundamentalists against secular progressives, the rural middle against the urban coast – and across the divide we’ve stared at one another, aided in our vision by little more than clichés. What a great relief, then, to read Vestal McIntyre’s splendid first novel, which renders such simplifications obsolete one character at a time, giving us instead, in all their broken, human form, the single mothers living in the respectable half of the trailer park and their brainy, lovelorn kids and perhaps McIntyre’s finest creation – the drug-addled sister of the school bus driver who longs to bear a child (she will break your heart). 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
“Reading Vestal McIntyre’s deliriously ambrosial novel is like entering reader’s heaven. Constantly surprising . . . I was shocked—shocked!—to discover an American novel about life in the late 20th century that is this ambitious, this accomplished, this compassionate, this funny, and this wise. I loved it.” - Peter Cameron
“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
