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The Vacationers: A Novel Hardcover – May 29, 2014

by Emma Straub (Author)

1,201 customer reviews

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"Delicious . . . richly riveting . . . The Vacationers offers all the delights of a fluffy, read-it-with-sunglasses-on-the-beach read, made substantial by the exceptional wit, insight, intelligence and talents of its author.”—People (four stars)

An irresistible, deftly observed novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers, about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca.

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.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2014: Here's the funny thing about family: there's no one you love more than your relatives, and yet they're also the people who push your buttons the most. Emma Straub has captured this dilemma in her pitch-perfect second novel The Vacationers. The Post family’s vacation to the Balearic island of Mallorca is one fraught with jealousy and quiet secrets. It's an anniversary for parents Franny and Jim, who are making amends for some rocky marital misgivings; their son Bobby and his much-maligned older girlfriend Carmen have a financial favor to ask; and high school-age daughter Sylvia has made it her mission to lose her virginity to her Spanish tutor. The novel is warm--not just for the sunny beaches that surround Mallorca, but for the compassion and humor that Straub imbues in her characters. The Vacationers is a summer read for sure, but you'd be hard pressed to find a smarter one. --Kevin Nguyen

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—In this delightful concoction, family and friends come together for two weeks of summer vacation on the island of Mallorca. Franny is a freelance magazine writer about food from different regions. She's currently not speaking to her husband, a magazine editor recently dismissed for sleeping with an employee only a few years older than their daughter, Sylvia. The teen cannot wait to start at Brown University in the fall. All she wants from this vacation is to lose her virginity and try to forget her best friend's betrayal. Cue Joan, the gorgeous local college boy Franny has hired to tutor Sylvia in Spanish. Also in attendance, Franny's best friend of 40 years, Charles, to provide comfort and counsel. Charles and his husband, Lawrence, are waiting to hear whether they've been chosen to adopt a baby boy. Sylvia's older brother Bobby and Bobby's much-older girlfriend, Carmen fly in from Miami. Straub fleshes out all of these characters, effortlessly illuminating their foibles and mistakes, mitigated by the grace of forgiveness and familial understanding. Just as a great recipe is balanced and spiced, so Straub mixes the stress and comedy of a family vacation spent in close quarters to delightful effect.—Angela Carstensen, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City

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Product details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books; 1st Edition edition (May 29, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781594631573
ISBN-13: 978-1594631573
ASIN: 1594631573
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 1,201 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #581,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8079 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Domestic Life
- #10352 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Life
- #19432 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Contemporary

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Go for a walk instead !

November 8, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The usually predictably disfunctional American family goes on holidays on the Mediterranean Sea. Nobody cares for each other and nobody cares (including the author) to make any connections with the history and culture of the beautiful country they are visiting. Everybody is too busy with their own very little and very miserable selves. The women are over sensitive, over assertive or aimlessly searching for themselves, the guys are insecure morons &/or ego centered cheats, with the exception of a gay couple of guys who are so honey sweet and nurturing that they would make the perfect darlings of this story, had the author remembered to make them somewhat real. It is the type of book that you would gladly leave on the shelf of the Bed & Breakfast's library where you found it. It will motivate the next guests to go out for a walk, even if it's raining.

27 people found this helpful

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Boring, dull, loathsome novel

July 8, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is one of the worst, most boring novels I have ever read, even by the standards of breezy-beach-read-without-much-literary-value (which was the exact genre I sought with this purchase). The novel centers on a family of dull people with insipid thoughts. Not one of the characters is likable. The plot points are not even interesting. Will the wife forgive the husband for his affair? Will the teenage daughter lose her virginity? Why does the adult son date a woman older than him? Each of these plot points are presented in the beginning and summarily resolved in the last chapter. In between, nothing happens. Just a hundred or so pages of uninteresting banter, descriptions of people's outfits and food, and careful following of the characters' movements around a shared vacation house. The ONLY interesting characters are the gay couple about to adopt a baby, but this plot is very much sidelined and the characters exit before the end of the novel. It was the only story line worth caring about and we don't even get to see it to the end. I don't understand how this novel has received so much positive press, except to think Ms. Straub's publishing house put some extraordinary marketing power behind it. Not worth the money or time.

14 people found this helpful

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Melanie Johnson

Boring as a real family vacation

September 14, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Yawn. Picked up The Vacationers because of all of the "hype" that seemed to surround it. Every time I logged on to Amazon, this book was "recommended" to me. Well, it was about as boring as a real life vacation with my parents. Jim and Franny want to have a vacation in Mallorca with their two children, Bobby and Sylvia and Franny's best gay couple, Lawrence and Charles. Some of the reviews I have read make it sound like some great, deep-dark secrets come out during this vacation but not much really happens. I kept thinking "Ooohhh, wouldn't it be crazy if Bobby was really gay doing it with Charles?" Or that Franny had a big secret, like she and Charles had an illicit affair when they were younger and had a baby they gave up for adoption? Anything. Just something more interesting that what was written.

6 people found this helpful

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Tara at Running 'n' Reading

Phenomenal read!

July 27, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Mallorca, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, is where the Post family is destined to vacation for two weeks in Emma Straub's new novel, The Vacationers. The trip is planned by the matriarch of the family, Franny, whose desire is to have her family together, all in one place at the same time (whether or not they want to be there themselves), on the eve of her only daughter's departure from the "nest," as she has recently graduated high school. For me, the idea of a family vacation is cringe-worthy, at best, and I was immediately drawn in by the undercurrent and tone of the novel.

Even though the structure of the novel may seem simple (chapters follow days of the vacation and their are predictable beginning and end points), it provides a calm, stable backdrop for the exciting family dynamics that unfold. Sylvia Post, the high school graduate, is witty and fresh; hers are some of the most easily quotable quotes in the book. I connected with Sylvia immediately as I held a high level of disdain for my mother at her age, as well. At one point in the novel Sylvia wonders, "What were parents anyway except two people who had once thought they were the smartest people in the world? They were a delusional species, as tiny-brained as dinosaurs."

Franny and Jim, Sylvia's parents, are discovering that life in their house without children may be even worse than their life together now. Jim has just been canned from his job after sleeping with an intern, which opens up what comes to be a prevalent theme in the novel - infidelity. The couple has yet to tell Sylvia and their son Bobby, who lives in Miami with his much older girlfriend, Carmen, about the circumstances surrounding their father's "retirement." Franny has invited both Bobby and Carmen to Mallorca, reluctantly, as Franny does not deem Carmen "appropriate" for her son and their interactions are quite entertaining.

The final couple along for the trip is that of Charles, Franny's long-time best friend, and his boyfriend Lawrence, who always feels like he is a third wheel around Charles and Franny and as if he is "playing catch up" for all of the years they have known each other before he was around. They have their own set of personal circumstances going on, which becomes more prominent as the story unfolds.

All of these folks arrive on Mallorca with their own agenda, their own ideal for this trip; however, as the characters develop and the dynamics heat up, we find their ideas being twisted and I found my interest building as I anticipated when and how things would erupt within the group. I'm not sure how satisfied I was by the ending, but I will leave that for each reader to decide; we all bring our own stories to these characters, and the individual flavor is what makes reading a novel so personal.

Ms. Straub writes some of her best characters and I thoroughly enjoyed the novel; I would highly recommend adding this to your travel bag, night stand or wherever you'll be stacking your summer reads.

3 people found this helpful

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Hemingway is Cursing in His Grave

July 2, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A well-to-do Manhattan family goes on vacation to Majorca just as their various relationships are falling apart. They do little to address their predictable shortcomings (Infidelity! Debt! Uncertainty!) while moping around and eating authentic Mediterranean fare. The poorly developed characters elicit little sympathy, nor do they inspire contempt. The days slowly pass. And when all is resolved on the final day, you find yourself wondering why you wasted your time and money hanging around to see what occurs. Anyone who has ever read The Sun Also Rises will wonder how a novelist can do so little with a gang of American (and one British) miscreants misbehaving in Spain.

4 people found this helpful

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