Book Review: Vestal McIntyre, You Are Not the One

by anna battista

The title for Vestal McIntyre’s debut collection of short stories sounds like some devastatingly shocking rejection, but, actually, it is taken by a little misunderstanding that happens at some point in the first story. In fact, the title of the anthology is rather apt as the novellas deal with small delusions and incomprehension rather than real tragedies. Featuring eight stories, You Are Not the One explores different worlds and different characters: the plots are often simple, yet the characters populating the stories are eccentric, original, complicated and caught up in bizarre situations such as the boy wearing a kangaroo suit to advertise the restaurant where he works who is mistakenly taken for somebody else and kidnapped by a gang of teenagers.

McIntyre’s best tales start from around page 90 with “ONJ.com”, the story of Olive, a young woman working in advertising who firmly believes that her life would be better if she had a gay friend, but, when she finds the perfect gay man to befriend, things don’t go as she hoped.

As a young gay author, McIntyre doesn’t limit himself to portraying gay characters, most of his characters are indeed straight. One of his best non-gay characters is Mark in “Dunford”, the story of a wealthy man unhappy with his life and jealous of his famous photographer wife and filmmaker son, who develops a fascination for escort girl ads and an obsession for masturbating in automatic car washes.

The best stories of the collections are “Foray” and “Nightwalking”: in the former Ray reads Moby Dick to his young cousin Vance, who has Down syndrome. As the story of the white whale unfolds and the Pequod and its crew are swallowed by the sea, the two finally manage to emotionally connect. In the latter, three grown-up children reunite for the first time after the death of their mother, with their father. As many family get-togethers, also this one will be disrupted during the dinner, as the father brings up some revelations that offend one of the siblings.

McIntyre’s prose is stylistically engaging, peppered by witty and darkly comic dialogues. The main themes of his stories are the complex relationships between families and the lack of fulfilment in life. Often compared to David Leavitt, Vestal McIntyre’s stories appeared in Open City and Tin House magazines, as well as in several anthologies, while You Are Not the One was also a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. To discover if McIntyre is really the next big thing you might have to wait till his first novel that he is currently writing. In the meantime, you can read and enjoy this refreshing collection of short stories.

{www.canongate.net}