The Vacationers by Emma Straub

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Read by Kristen Sieh

6 hours 39 minutes

Published May 2014 by Riverhead Books

Publisher's Summary: 

For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.

This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.

My Thoughts: 

Look at the cover, read the summary - now you know exactly what you're going to get with this one. It's absolutely a book to read on the beach (hence the reason I chose to listen to it in February - oh, well!). It has that summer lightness that's perfect for a warm, sunny day and endings to its storylines that are exactly what you'd expect. 

Several reviewers said you feel like you know these people - I'd say that's probably because you've met them before in other books. Not literally, this isn't a sequel. But we've met the boomer parents who are experiencing some mid-life crisis, the teenage daughter that spends most of her days moping away, the gay couple who want a child, the girlfriend no one likes. If you're going to start from there, you'd better bring something more to your story. Straub has. Her characters can be witty, catty, and sympathetic in ways I wasn't expecting. 

Mallorca, a place I've certainly heard of but never really thought about, comes alive. Even before I looked at pictures of the island, I could picture the Franny struggling with her stick-shift rental up and down the winding hills, visualize the isolated beach coves, and imagine the isolation of a home in the hills that's only minutes from town. And the food, my goodness did Straub make me want to eat, but more importantly to cook in the way that Franny does. Franny and I do have that in common - she shows her love through food, through cooking for her family and I love to do that as well. 

After telling you that the characters are somewhat stereotypical and the ending is largely predictable, I can still recommend this book because I know that you'll get exactly what you're expecting from it. And sometimes that's exactly what you need.