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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Neat Twists on Traditional Theme, March 7, 2007
This review is from: Vintage: A Ghost Story (Paperback)
Vintage follows the accepted conventions of the ghost story: an unhappy soul haunts a section of highway not realizing that he is dead and so causes problems for the living, the plot of the novel is how the ghost is allowed to rest. But Steve Berman's added a neat twist--actually two twists. The first is that the main characters who experience the haunting and then try to do something to help the ghost are modern day goth teenagers with a penchant for dressing outlandishly in black (with maybe a little mascara for effect), drinking and drugging with reckless abandon, and driving their parents crazy. The novel is told in the first person of one of these teenagers; Berman has got the jargon and voice down pat to introduce the reader to this goth Holden Caufield with a cellphone and taste for ecstasy and peppermint schnapps. The second twist is that the main character is gay; he's living with a liberal-minded aunt because his uptight parents told him to leave when his homosexuality was made embarrassingly public. He's got a job working in a retro fashions and used clothing store and made friends with several teenage girls, including a young lesbian couple, who frequent the store looking for goth costumery. And the ghost that's haunting the highway on the outskirts of town was himself a teenager of the 1950s who died mysteriously after his own homosexuality was made embarrassingly public--maybe he was murdered; maybe by the guy he was in love with; maybe in an act of homophobia. There are twists and turns in the plot. The resolution is delightfully satisfying. Even the ghost is happy by the end and can go to his rest. And the teenagers turn their goth fascinations toward adulthood. The most interesting and well-written section of the story revolves around the protagonist's infatuation with the ghost--and the ghost's with him. It's not giving away too much to reveal that the ghost died longing for love and conflicted about his sexuality and so when the goth teenager shows up dealing with the same issues, a strange relationship develops. The description of their lovemaking is both arousing and exciting and creepy and, literally, chilling. For the ghost's affections turn out to suck the life and warmth out of the living boy and he has to struggle against his own conflicts with growing up gay to avoid following the ghost into icy death. Vintage: A Ghost Story certainly plays on the gay interest with consciousness on the margins. It's a fast read, entertaining, and just delightfully chilling. The reader too will be happy, warmed up, and satisfied when the steaming hot peppermint-flavored cocoa is served at the end--and gay love saves the day.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If only I'd had this book in 1994.., March 20, 2007
This review is from: Vintage: A Ghost Story (Paperback)
Vintage is the perfect book for the isolated gay teenager in all of us; it takes some of the standards of coming out fiction (getting thrown out, straight girl best friend, burgeoning love) and reinvents them in unexpected ways. This character is wry and sad, tender and smart in a novel that is powerful because it works as a love story that set my heart a flutter (can only imagine the effect it would have had on my 14-year old heart), as a gothic tale with ghosts, dusty libraries and vintage clothing, and as a narrative with real, dynamic and surprising relationships and verifiable emotional resonance.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
quick-paced, captivating and poignant, May 21, 2007
This review is from: Vintage: A Ghost Story (Paperback)
I don't usually read horror or paranormal, so I was surprised that I liked this book as much as I did. At first, it seemed like it might be a bit like the Demi Moore movie, Ghost, because of a burgeoning human-ghost relationship, but it quickly becomes much, much darker and the main characters are much more richly developed. There are some similarities to The Sixth Sense, but as the narrator is a teenager, this is just as much a story of the search for love returned (both familial and romantic) as it is fear of the spectral. I read very slowly, and I very rarely stay up all night finishing a book, but I did with this one. (Kind of silly since I'm a scaredy-cat and, even though the story wasn't immensely frightening, I didn't want to turn off the light when I finished.) Perhaps some readers will be a bit frustrated with the narrator's initial introspection, but keep reading, as after the first few pages the story quickly becomes gripping. I think more and more grown-ups are discovering that YA fiction often hits them in a more deeply personal way than typical adult fiction, and this book, like Weetzie Bat or Tithe, is a good example of that. Had I been a little bolder, I might have been one of the very tiny contingent of "dress to depress" Goth kids at my high school - the ones that wore duster coats and black nail polish, listened to "How Soon Is Now" by The Smiths, drew beautiful pictures on their notebooks, and all went off to Sarah Lawrence College. However, even though I didn't wear the pain on the outside, I'm fairly certain that I felt the same torment and isolation. And while I feel this story would most likely appeal to more than just despondent souls (especially since it's something of a romance), I have half a mind to buy a copy for my high school library in the hopes that someone there now will have a chance of feeling understood.
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