Meanwhile, Jim proves his love and repentance by stalking Franny around the island via the borrowed motorbike of a stranger in black leather he meets on the plane over. Franny is using their 2 weeks in Mallorca to decide whether or not to stay in her marriage to her cheating, unemployed, albeit tall, husband.įranny toys with the idea of taking on a lover of her own, an old famous Mallorcan tennis pro with a sexy times accent, but unfortunately knocks herself out during a practice volley with him (?), giving herself a big bump on her noggin. This is the tale of Franny: a short, fat, petty shrew of a woman who goes on vacation with her gay (of course!) best friend and his partner her philandering husband Jim her spoiled, useless children and Carmen, poor, poor Carmen. This book was about as satisfying as eating a 12 pack of sugarless cinnamon gum for Sunday dinner. I guess the other summer books must have been really bad. As a reader, I'm baffled why critics think I'd want to spend time with these boring, unpleasant people. If they were my family, I certainly wouldn't want to spend any time with them. I get that The Vacationers is about family dysfunction, loving your family anyway, etc, but most of the characters are so unpleasant and/or cliche, and their stories so uninteresting, that I didn't care what happened by the end. Carmen is also somewhat interesting, but also gets short shrift. Those would be interesting topics to explore, but instead Straub treats Charles like a heterosexual woman desperate to have a baby.

That would be fine, but its hardly explored, nor is the idea of what marriage means to gay men, how it affects them and their families, how same-sex marriage might change heterosexual marriage, etc. But they get the least amount of pages and even then the focus is on their having a kid. The book's only novel characters are Charles and Lawrence, an older married gay couple who want to adopt a baby. Older son is a screw up living with an older woman he doesn't love so he cheats on her in order to end the relationship. Younger daughter is a surly virgin who hates everyone and thinks she'll be ugly forever.

He feels bad and waits around to see if she'll forgive him. Husband has cheated on wife who has kind of let herself go.

The plot was boring with the various storylines being mostly very well-trod ground done better by other books. The writing was perfectly fine, if nothing special, but the story itself was so. Mass hallucination? Bribery? All the critics were friends of the writer? I don't know what else would explain this book being anointed this summer's must read. After reading it, I can only shake my head in wonder and ask why. It had glowing reviews and seemed to be on every summer reading list. I'm referring to the critical reaction to The Vacationers.

I'm not referring to the book itself, which had a minimal plot that was very easy to follow. I confess to being utterly baffled by this book.

The vacationers by emma straub