The Vacationers
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3.7 • 12 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Two weeks in a remote island villa with America's most dysfunctional family - what could possibly go wrong?
The Posts are going on their first family vacation in years, and it's going to be a special one:
Jim and Franny are taking their daughter Sylvia, son Bobby and his girlfriend, and Franny's best friend Charles and his husband, all the way to Mallorca for two weeks of the sort of relaxation, culture and cuisine that only Europe can offer. But there are problems.
After a transgression with a twenty-three-year-old editorial assistant, Jim has been unceremoniously sacked from his job, and now his and Franny's marriage is on the rocks. Charles and Lawrence are feeling divided over their future, Bobby is mired in debt problems and stuck in a relationship that's pulling in opposite directions and his girlfriend Carmen, super-fit personal trainer and, at forty-something, far too old for Bobby, seems to have realized her mistake. As for Sylvia, she's eighteen, about to go to college, and determined to lose her virginity before she gets there ...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Post family is going to Mallorca for two weeks of vacation, but for them clouds are forming over the sunlit destination: the tickets were already booked when it came to light that Jim, Post p re, has recently committed transgressions grave enough to get him fired and infuriate Franny, his wife of 35 years. The couple's youngest daughter, Sylvia, has just graduated from high school and her parents are anxious to have one last family holiday before she becomes an adult. Joining them are Sylvia's older brother and his girlfriend, as well as Franny's best friend Charles and his husband. Every couple, and indeed every individual, arrives with a mix of optimism and trepidation, along with a host of uncertainties that, by book's end, are satisfyingly resolved. Straub (Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures) seems to have found her stride. The pacing is quick but satisfying and the characters themselves feel genuinely complex, interesting, and knowable. While the structure of the novel does feel somewhat unoriginal it begins with the airport, ends with the plane home, and the chapters in between are days of the trip Straub uses the simplicity of the organization to her advantage. A pleasant, readable journey.
