The Vacationers: A Novel

I included The Vacationers on my list of summer books I was excited about because I thought it sounded like a mix of Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements and Jonathan Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You. I had high hopes given I loved those two books and had read a number of glowing reviews. Unfortunately, The Vacationers was ultimately pretty blah for me.Franny and Jim Post are tackling a rough spot in their marriage that has forced some major life changes (especially for Jim) and hope this trip will give them some clarity on their situation. Their teenage daughter, Sylvia, is looking forward to reinventing her high school self at Brown University in the fall. Their late twenties son, Bobby, brings his forty year old girlfriend that no one approves of, along with serious maturity issues of his own. And, Franny’s best friend, Charles, and his husband, Lawrence are along for the ride.The Vacationers wasn’t terrible, but I kept waiting for something to happen…and waiting and waiting. Books like this (i.e. those without much action) really need something else brilliant to carry them…whether it be the characters or the writing or the humor. Straub’s writing didn’t stand out and I was missing the witty social commentary that made Seating Arrangements and This is Where I Leave You so entertaining.I also didn’t particularly like any of the characters and was especially irked by Franny. I think I was supposed to feel sorry for her (I mean, her husband had just cheated on her with a twenty some year old…hang tight everyone, that’s not a spoiler…it’s discussed at the very beginning of the book!), but she came across as such a striving martyr. She was constantly cooking and serving everyone on the trip so that they would feel indebted to her and “need” her. She even makes a point of having to be the one to carry the most “elaborate” dish of the meal to the table to emphasis who should get the credit for the meal.Two final things bothered me that I’m sure many people didn’t even notice. Straub includes some scenes involving sports (swimming and tennis) where she gets the details wrong. I was a competitive swimmer growing up and am now an avid tennis fan, so this sloppiness drove me crazy!First, Bobby is swimming laps in the pool behind their rented house, and Straub mentions that “6 laps of a pool is a mile”. I’m not sure how long this particular pool was supposed to be, but she didn’t even come close! In a 25 yard pool (probably the very longest any private pool is likely to be), a competitive mile is 66 laps (with a “lap” equaling one length) and in a 50 meter Olympic size pool, it’s 30 laps. Even if you suppose she meant a lap to be up and back, she’s still way off. She also mentions that Bobby touches the pool wall with his hand before doing a flip turn, which you don’t do!Since the Posts are vacationing in Mallorca, she includes a fictional tennis center that is obviously based on the real life Rafael Nadal International Tennis Centre. She mentions that the fictional Nadal has a hair trigger temper on court and is generally badly behaved off the court. The real Nadal is supposedly one of the nicest guys on tour, well liked in the locker room, and rarely loses his temper on the court. I understand that this is fiction and she can write the character however she wants, but she loses credibility when her fictional character is so clearly based on a real person and she makes his personality the polar opposite of how it is in real life. Why not just be accurate?Unfortunately, The Vacationers ended up being mediocre for me and the inaccurate sports details just put me over the edge.For more reviews, check out my blog, Sarah's Book Shelves.

SPOILER ALERT!!! I give away most of the plot in this review.Married couple Franny and Jim take a vacation to Spain, along with their two adult children and another couple.If I could rewind time, I would have preferred not to go on vacation with them, and skip the whole trip.Jim recently lost his job after sleeping with a woman one third his age. Their daughter Sylvia needs to escape New York after a scandal. Their son Bobby is also a cheater, in a dead-end relationship and with a pile of insurmountable debt. Franny’s best friend Charles is there to console her, and his partner Lawrence comes along for the ride. Themes of couples with age differences permeate the storyline, as well as infidelity and lust. The book purports to have a happy ending with a family finally in harmony, but instead feels like a bomb waiting to detonate the minute they return home.The storyline is predictable and cliche, which wouldn’t bother me for a beach read, except for the fact that I didn’t enjoy spending time with the characters. Jim is a lustful cheater, barely regretful for what he’s done. I hated him immediately, and listening to his inner thoughts was nothing short of painful. Franny is frustrating, keeping Jim at arm’s length for most of the book. Will she forgive him or not? Will she take him back? Who cares!? She should have dumped him before they ever boarded the plane. I was flat out shocked when she reunites with him, and equally horrified when he thought about his affair right before they jumped back into bed. Am I supposed to feel happy for them when they canoodle at the airport on the way home? Gross.Sylvia seems the most relatable of the four family members, until she goes on a date with Joan, her Spanish tutor, and reveals just how obnoxious, entitled, and rude she has been raised to be. She loses her virginity to him, and instead of a romantic experience on a swept away beach, the scene is awkward, robotic, and transactional. That’s the moment in the book where I really gave up, realizing that this is nowhere near a fun beach read as advertised, but more accurately a book about severe dysfunction.I agree with some reviews stating the book is vaguely racist, with the only local characters being an impossibly handsome Spanish tutor and a famous, and also handsome, tennis coach. The whole family hates Bobby’s Floridian girlfriend Carmen for no discernable reason, even though she seems the most sane of the bunch.This entitled family does not deserve to come to the beach with you. It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, but I wouldn’t jump to recommend it either.

Mallorca provides a stunning backdrop for this novel exploring fidelity, love and familial ties that bind.Witty, wisely observed and richly satisfying writing from a major literary talent.An emerging author not to be missed!

Too tidy a finish

This book tries to combine two contradictory genres. Romantic fiction is schmaltzy and predictable and we have all that here. Literary fiction on the other hand has to delve into the paradoxes, flaws and redemptive impulses of the human character — and we have an ATTEMPT at that. The problem is it's impossible to mesh the two, so all the good stuff (and, to be fair, there is quite a bit) still gets thrown off balance. The books spins so out of control so that when the outsider character leaves three-quarters the way through you want to go with her. As for the gay characters, their plot-necessary sanctimony is embarrassing, meaning they come across not only as false but also obnoxious, which is surely unintended. I would like Emma Straub to forget about the dollars, go with her admirable Austen-sh impulses, and write actual literature next time.

The Vacationers by Emma Straub is story of a dysfunctional New York family who, mainly due to the strong-arm tactics of the mother, high-achieving author Franny, are taking a last holiday together in Majorca before the youngest daughter, Sylvia, goes off to college. But it slowly transpires that Franny may have other motives for insisting on the two-week summer break in the Balearics.As the sunny days turn into humid nights, secrets, which each member of the extended family would rather keep to themselves, begin to unravel ...I couldn't put this book down and very nearly finished it before my holiday. Straub is a master at describing friendships and tricky interconnecting family relationships from all points of view, making none of the characters the villain of the piece, whatever their transgression. Making mistakes in life is part of being human. The Vacationers is an uplifting book on all levels.

Entertaining an engrossing, but with a wry insight,this account of an American family and friends renting a villa in rural Majorca for two weeks ticks all the boxes. Fran and her husband are trying to plaster over and conceal from the rest the truth about Jim's early resignation from work at the age of 60. Her teenage daughter, Sylvie, is looking for adventure and her son, Bobby, turns up with his much older girlfriend. Throw in a married couple of gays and you have an interesting mix for a house party. All the characters are really well drawn and I look forward to more from Emma Straub.