Customer Reviews

Vacation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I love this book. Unferth is a writer of brilliance and inventiveness and playfulness who is not also excruciatingly vain. It feels like such a find. To be able to read this kind of wonderful engagement with language without the awful smugness and insincere exhibitionism of, say, a Jonathan Safran Foer. I also love that character and story are not just props to display brilliant writing, but that they work together to share something about what it is to be human and frail and wanting. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Vacation is the hilarious account of a husband on a journey to save his marriage. Myers knows something odd is going on with his wife, and to solve the mystery he's forced to take a vacation to seek answers even though he has no idea what he's looking for or where he's going. In its own distinctive style, Vacation bears witness to a raw and irrepressible human spirit.

Unferth is a genius at crafting perfect (and perfectly unusual) sentences. Each page is a treat. This excerpt, in which Myers describes what happens to the accumulated stuff when a couple breaks up, illustrates this story's unique blend of melancholy and humor:
"There were also the mirrors, the photos, and other inaccurate reflections. The razor, the bathtub. The kids and the dog, although they had none. The idea of dog, that. The possibility of dog that now would not be possible. Her mother, or her mother's dislike of him, who would get that? Surely that would come with him. Along with the rooster clock that she loved, that he hated, that she bought when she started to hate him."

Images of drowning are prevalent throughout Vacation, and Unferth masterfully transforms these desperate images into events of great beauty:
"A man struggling in water looks somewhat like the inside of a jewel box or a crystal. The tiny bubbles shine whitely and sparkle. The more the man thrashes, the more it seems that gems and bits of silver and pearl are falling around him, as if he were caught inside a heavy opera costume, as if he were crashing through the stained glass of a cathedral, as if he were wrapped in air and light."

Unfortunately, the primary story is disrupted by a sideshow involving a daughter seeking her dolphin-trainer father. This subplot is never resolved and becomes an unwanted distraction that should have been deleted during the editing process. Despite this imperfection, Vacation is entirely charming and well worth reading.

It's been a long time since I've read a book where the characters have kept me rapt enough to try and read it all the way through....I was almost tempted to call off of work for a day!!!

This book is worth a read, if only for an unusual view of humanity. Everyone experiences it, but few people write about it successfully: human nature is a strange thing.

There are several narratives happening at once, and Ms. Unferth craftily slides back and forth between the three--perhaps four?--stories. I found her writing style mildly tiresome, because of her sometimes awkward blatancy, but I still feel that this book has value as a vignette of the more unusual side of silly humans. Why not pick people apart, warts hairs and all? I think all of us will be able to identify with some aspect of the characters in the book.

Normally I finish everybook I start. Even if it is a bad book. I liked the writting style, but found it quite boring.