Vacation [Hardcover]

Deb Olin Unferth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2008

A man follows his wife. The wife follows a stranger. The stranger leaves town and the man goes after him, determined to settle the score. But the man is not the only one looking for the stranger, and the stranger has troubles of his own. Amid all this, the earth quakes, a boy leaps out a window, and a dolphin swims free. Of course people have adventures of this kind—of course! of course!—but we’ve never heard of it before. With deadpan humor and skewed wordplay, Deb Olin Unferth weaves a mystery of hope and heartbreak.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enthralling headscratcher of a first novel, Unferth (the story collection Minor Robberies) weaves an intricate tale of quests and escapes, of leaving and following. As a child, Myers falls out of a window, shattering his skull and unknowingly living the rest of his life with a misshapen head. Years later, he follows his wife, who spends her evenings following a man she doesn't know. The man, whom Myers identifies as a former classmate of his named Gray, is unaware that he is being doubly tracked. The marriages of both men fall apart, and Myers finds himself on vacation, traveling in search of Gray while Gray's ex-wife and daughter look for him, too. The problem is that Gray does not know where Gray is. If this all sounds puzzling, it is; still, with grace and skill, Unferth manages to weave together the most far-fetched of events. A subplot involving a dolphin untrainer and a woman in search of her birth father is distracting, and Unferth's wordplay can verge on the excessive, but a poignancy emerges in spite of Unferth's post-modern indulgences. (Sept.)
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Review

"Deb Olin Unferth is one of the most daring and entertaining writers in America today. She is an artist who knows that every sentence is an opportunity to have it all music, invention, narrative drive and hers most definitely do. This novel is tricky, odd, unnerving, Hilarious, and ultimately quite scary, not to mention very, very moving. We may or may not deserve this Vacation, but we are lucky to have it."
— Sam Lipsyte

"Wonderful, addictive prose. Ms. Unferth sure knows how to turn a phrase and it's a delight to follow her across the American landscape."
— Gary Shteyngart

"Part mystery, part sonata, Unferth writes like a musician plays, weaving images and themes and melodies with these beautifully rhythmic, funny, heart-breaking sentences. The whole novel should be >read aloud and relished."
— Aimee Bender

"Deb Olin Unferth is, I believe, one of the crucial literary artists of her generation. Her fictions give evidence of an artist determined to speak about the remarkable, who manages with exactitude all elements necessary to produce the well-made, eccentric object. Her vision evokes high comedy and the violence of tragedy heard through voices exquisitely particular to her mind."
— Diane Williams

Product Details

• Hardcover: 215 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's; 1st edition (September 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934781096
• ISBN-13: 978-1934781098
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #297,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucky to have "Vacation" - funny, tragic and terrifying, September 8, 2008

By 

Louise L. Stauffer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vacation (Hardcover)

Each sentence in "Vacation" propels us into the next one: the language is a mix of the way we think only we alone speak to ourselves inside our head, the appallingly lonely thoughts, the insane reasoning we would never tell anyone about -and music, the kind of music words make when the ones are placed side by side by side and then create a kind of hum.
This book is not only a treasure because it describes, in a deftly-woven narrative, adventures that shock. But more importantly, maybe, it shows us that while people are focusing on what they must do to others, they are not paying attention to what they are doing to themselves. They are missing their own life, their own story, but luckily Ms. Unferth is there to capture it for us.
The characters are all strange and familiar in some way: each hope they have, we have had too. We want them to change, to get better, just as we hope we will someday too.
Airplanes, hotel rooms and supermarket carts are described and hurtled at us so that we feel as if there is no way we can ever look at them the same way again. They become terrifying containers that we can no longer trust.
"Vacation" examines not only why people do crazy things like follow their wives, jump out of windows and save sharks, but it highlights the scary way that these things can happen because of us. We are entertained, seduced, and then set free to fend for ourselves.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning!, September 14, 2008

By 

Mark (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vacation (Hardcover)

I thought I had a good sense of what Unferth could do with words after I read her extraordinary short story collection "Minor Robberies." But I wasn't prepared for the narrative genius and emotional exploration I found in this novel... Reading "Vacation" is a visceral, sentence-by-sentence experience that's hard to forget. Unferth drags you to an empty and alien place, where people go to get away, and flings you chest-first into their confusions... She makes familiar things look strange and strange things look silly, combing through the fabric of betrayal and misunderstanding that make for bad marriages, bad parents, and bad friends... it's a comedy, I think, but a comedy that hurts. I haven't been the same since I read it.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange and Beautiful, September 8, 2008

By 

Norman Fayrewether (Forest City, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vacation (Hardcover)

Vacation is a strange and haunting novel, beautifully formed and brilliantly written, deeply funny and deeply sad. As vivid as a fever dream and as ingeniously structured as a fugue, Unferth's novel counterpoints the voices, viewpoints, and travels of several cunningly related characters for whom travel functions not as tourism but as a pathological flight from the self--a flight that's doomed to fail. Only by disintegrating as individuals--by falling apart or going insane--do any of the characters finally escape themselves. Unferth's writing has been praised as "dreamlike" or "surreal," but those terms are misleading: Unferth is a supremely attentive and clear-eyed observer of the real world. Her evocation of Central America (where the quests of the characters converge in a breathless stretto), for instance, is the most vivid and convincing portrait I've ever seen of that part of the world.