Book 4: The Vacationers

The Vacationers

Emma Straub

I'm usually somewhat skeptical of this kind of fiction, which lies somewhere between the beach read and the serious literary novel, but I decided to give The Vacationers a go anyway after seeing it recommended on several summer reading lists (yeah, I'm a bit late to that party). For most of the novel, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing and my emotional investment despite the characters' abundant flaws. The setup (a nuclear family, plus one of their children's live-in girlfriend and a gay couple who are friends of the family, is stuck together during a foreign vacation) is well-worn but also well-chosen, and Straub keeps it interesting despite treading over very little new ground. It is, in fact, remarkable how enjoyable the novel is despite the many clichés on which it relies. The gang's all here: the husband who has just been caught with a young editorial assistant, his insipid and overbearing wife, their spoiled good-for-nothing son, the gay best friend and his sensitive husband, and the teenager who just wants to get laid by her hot tutor. Somehow, Straub makes her readers care about these people, or at least elicits their curiosity about how, precisely, the inevitable character arcs will unfold.

I suspect that the novel's success is due to the author's effortless writing. The metaphors and dialogue are equally apt, and the language is usually spot on: evocative without being unduly showy and effective without becoming trite. Straub avoids the kind of self-serving poetic excess that plagues so many novels like this without being afraid to inject a bit of higher-minded prose; she has excellent intuition and a willingness to embrace restraint that makes her more flowery prose all the more effective. Even more impressively, the book moves seamlessly between various characters' points of view without having to rely solely on section or chapter breaks to signify shifts in perspective. This allows readers to come to know the characters intimately as individuals despite the familiar foundations on which they are built, and Straub's ability to convincingly get inside the mind of each of the protagonists is no mean feat.

It's a damn shame that all of this goodwill is nuked to hell during the book's closing chapters. Straub opts for each and every one of the most obvious conclusions to each character's story, to the point where any and all credibility she had cultivated is immediately, completely, and irrevocably lost. Of course x happens, the reader thinks, no matter how unlikely or utterly ridiculous x may be for these characters in this novel. Characters suddenly gain new personalities at the author's whim, apparently because it was convenient to ensure that the book- marketed, remember, as an upmarket beach read- had a happy ending. This is more than maddening; frankly, it's insulting to assume that readers will suddenly forgive and forget as easily as the characters apparently do. Straub takes so much care to expose each character's subtle strengths and flaws throughout most of the book, only to resort to the path of least resistance in each and every possible case.

Is the terrible ending enough to ruin the whole experience? Probably not, and I presume that a lot of readers will be satisfied with the gooey happy Post family that remains after the final page, rather than a version that is tethered more closely- and thus more uncomfortably- to the reality that Straub is so willing to acknowledge and explore throughout the rest of the novel. In the end, the book reduces itself to its lowest common denominator, and an ordinary story made compelling in the hands of a skilled author becomes another boring, sappy testament to whiny rich white people's problems. That kind of book can be interesting and, indeed, worth reading, but this particular example could have been so much more; in the end it is left to languish in the shadow of its own wasted potential. The Vacationers is a partially excellent book that succumbs to outside pressure, worth reading for some of its insights but ultimately disappointing because, like so many other books, it comes so tantalizingly close to being something much more meaningful.

Grade: B