Saturday, July 5, 2014

THE VACATIONERS: EMMA STRAUB



This is supposedly one of the 'hot summer' reads, recommended on NPR a few weeks ago.  Evie read it first, and I just finished,  a nice light read, with some interesting insights in to relationships, but fairly predictable from the start: the husband and wife reconcile, the daughter gets laid, the gay friends adopt a baby, and the son seems to have grown up.  I don't think any of the aforementioned is a spoiler, just obvious from the start, in other words, no surprises, a happy ending for all.

Jim and Franny are the parents, just turned sixty.  Franny found out about Jim's affair with a 23 year old intern, just after making plans for a two week vacation in Majorca with kids and their two gay, married friends, Charles and Lawrence.  There daughter Sylvia is an unhappy 18 teen year old, surprise, about ready to go off to Brown for her freshmen year, more than happy to get rid of her boring high school friends, meaning she did not fit in very well.  Their twenty eight year old son is visiting with his forty year old girl friend, a coach at one of the biggest gyms in Miami, Florida.  Bobby met her at the gym, and she took him over as a project, hoping to make him into a man (it didn't work).  So all seven of them meet in Majorca, in lovely house they have been given by a friend of Charles, set in the mountains, among the pines, with a swimming pool.  What could be better, right?

From there, things turn from worst, the first week, to better, the second week, as I mentioned earlier. Everything works out in the end, the turbulence of the  first week, the infidelity, Bobby's cougar, Sylvia's lack of a boy friend, and Charles and Lawrence's childlessness all get solved in the last few days.   Then, everyone  flies home, the new parents first, then the kids with Jim and Franny, now holding hands and reconciled to what life will bring them in their dotage.  A fair read, better at the beginning, I thought, as you get to know the characters, not as good later because you don't really like any of them that much, nothing invested in them.

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