Vintage: A Ghost Story in Queereaders

May 20, 2015 Jon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-gay-ya, favorite-gay-speculative

Excellent gay YA speculative novel with a little bit of mystery. Highly recommended, and not just to YA readers.

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Mar 13, 2017 J. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A superb YA ghost story and an excellent YA gay romance novel rolled into one. My only complaint is that I would have loved to,live in this world longer--could have gone on another hundred pages with no complain from me. Highly recommended.

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Dec 07, 2008 Paul Jr. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: paranormal, gay-romance, gay-fiction, coming-of-age, young-adult

What could possibly be worse than being “one of the odd ones,” an outcast in the small town where you grew up, a place where everyone knows everyone else? How about being a gay outcast? Sure, but how about being a gay outcast that attracts the spirits of the undead? Such is the premise of Steve Berman’s charming Vintage: A Ghost Story, a Young Adult novel with enough in to also satisfy the not-so-young adults out there.

Told in the first person, Vintage focuses on an unnamed (and, therefore, univ What could possibly be worse than being “one of the odd ones,” an outcast in the small town where you grew up, a place where everyone knows everyone else? How about being a gay outcast? Sure, but how about being a gay outcast that attracts the spirits of the undead? Such is the premise of Steve Berman’s charming Vintage: A Ghost Story, a Young Adult novel with enough in to also satisfy the not-so-young adults out there.

Told in the first person, Vintage focuses on an unnamed (and, therefore, universal) seventeen-year-old boy and his insular group of friends, a family made up of outsiders. Our hero—having recently run away from home and dropped out of high school when his parents discovered he was gay—lives with his likeable, albeit a bit dense (or is she?) Aunt Jan, and passes the time with his best friend Trace, a similarly disaffected young woman. He is young and full of hormones and that exquisite longing for someone to love, someone to help him take his sexuality beyond the theoretical, the bedroom fantasies. The problem is, our hero doesn’t believe any boy would really be interested in him. So, he mostly hangs out with Trace, and the duo try to pass the boredom of their lives by dressing in dark clothes, drinking exotic beverages and attending random funerals that feed their interest in all things occult.

Now, don’t be deceived. Berman may have wrapped his characters in the trappings of the goth scene, but he expertly avoids the character clichés: the faux bravado of goths, the pretentiousness, the acid-dropping recklessness. Berman keeps the characters firmly rooted in reality, imbuing them with the very tangible concerns and fears of youth without ever pushing them into melodrama. The protagonist and Trace have simply adopted some of the aspects of goth as a sort of armor, making themselves stand out before others have a chance to point at them and laugh for their differences. Filtering in and out of our hero and Trace’s lives are a teen lesbian couple, Maggie and Liz, and Trace’s brother, Second Mike—so called as his mother named him Mike after her first son who’d run away and was presumed dead. Second Mike is a typical younger brother, fifteen and standing on the sidelines with admiration, hovering about the older kids in his sister’s life, sometimes annoyingly so.

One night while walking home from Trace’s, our protagonist heads down Route 47 and stumbles upon the ghost of a high school football star who was killed on that road some 50 years before. Though our hero had heard the story before, it never involved the ghost speaking to anyone, and when our hero convinces Trace to come out to the highway on another night, he is amazed to learn that the ghost only speaks to him and no one else. Smitten, he obsesses on the ghost, on his good looks, his vintage physique, and finds himself inexplicably “falling” for him. In short, our hero has found someone who–he believes–in the real world would never, ever give him the time of day, someone who makes him feel special. But as the protagonist has more and more encounters with his ghostly boyfriend and learns that the jock isn’t the only ghost that has taken an interest in him, things begin to feel a little more dangerous. What is it really that this ghost wants? Is he as gentle and loving as he seems? Or are there darker needs feeding this phantom’s desire for our hero, some need that could prove fatal to all involved.

In Vintage, Berman has created a kindler, gentler, and, dare I say it, a vintage ghost story–one that harkens back to the urban legends of our youths, when tales of these types were devoid of massive gore or spatterpunk’s cynicism. Wisely, Berman never pushes things too far and mines humor where he can to keep things on track. When the boy finds himself falling in love with a ghost, the author is wise enough to have his characters understand the absurdity of that notion. And when our hero begins to see more and more ghosts, he sees the humor in it. When did I become the kid from The Sixth Sense? In short, Berman knows just how far he can take the characters and the result is that they are kept very real, very appealing because they are more than stereotypes.

Berman also finds some really nice ways to pack a lot of character information into very few words. Just by the fact that Second Mike was named after his dead brother, we’re given a history without ever having to delve into its constituent parts. We can imagine what it must have been like for Second Mike to grow up in the shadow of a brother who had lived and died before he was even born. And we learn a lot about our protagonist, about his outlook on life from two simple sentences: I always thought my life would end up as an Araki film. Nothing by Burton. Trace is also nicely full character, a girl on the outside who is blooming into a womanhood of her own, even as our protagonist becomes more comfortable with himself, his orientation and the world about him. She is more than a “hag.” She’s a woman who is best friends with our gay hero, but not co-dependent with him; not so wrapped up in him and his feelings that she puts her own life on the sidelines. Very nice.

With Trace, Second Mike and our protagonist, we have a nice trio of likeable, yet flawed characters and the piece works best when it stays focused on them and the plot. When we start wandering too far away from those three or the central story, the characters get a little thinner and the pace a little slower. Maggie and Liz tend to be drawn with a coarser brush than our core characters (I often go them confused as they seemed somewhat interchangeable), and the subplot with their characters is not as strong as it probably could have been had their personalities been drawn a little fuller, more distinctive. But in the end, the focus returns to the core group and the pace goes back to its nice, easy flow.

In the end, Berman has written a very, very nice YA piece that says a lot about self-acceptance, seeing beyond one’s self, learning to recognize the good that may be right under your own nose, and discovering that love is more than infatuation or hormones. Yet, Vintage is never preachy and Berman never hammers any message home. Like the prose, it all just easily woven into the mesh of the book. A charming read that is part coming-of-age, part love story, and part horror story (with some genuinely creepy moments), Vintage may be directed at Young Adults, but its story is one which should appeal to a wide variety of ages.

Originally reviewed for Uniquely Pleasurable ...more

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Apr 03, 2013 N.S. rated it it was amazing

I have read this book three times and own digital and physical copies. Each reading reveals new elements, and its understated nature reminds me of another all-time favorite of mine, Rosemary’s Baby. It’s a good one to add to your Halloween season must-read pile.

The protagonist and his best friend Trace are relatable teens, misfits from both mainstream high school culture and the families they hail from, stuck between childhood and adult life. Rejected by his immediate family for being gay, he i ...more

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May 12, 2008 Jennifer Wardrip rated it liked it

Shelves: trt-posted-reviews, read-by-other-reviewers

Reviewed by JodiG. for TeensReadToo.com

What would be more difficult to tell your friends and family: that you are gay or that you can see ghosts?

Late one night, a teenage boy encounters a ghost while walking along a dark stretch of road. The ghost is that of a handsome high school athlete who was killed on that same road in 1957. Now the main character finds himself drawn into an obsessive relationship with the ghost. One that seems to get more dangerous with every encounter.

In addition to his ...more

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