The Vacationers - Softcover

Straub, Emma

3.16

81,348 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594138427 ISBN 13: 9781594138423

Publisher: Large Print Press, 2015

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The Posts are going on their first family vacation in years, and it's going to be a special one: Jim and Franny are taking their daughter Sylvia, son Bobby and his girlfriend, and Franny's best friend Charles and his husband, all the way to Mallorca for two weeks of the sort of relaxation, culture and cuisine that only Europe can offer. But there are problems. After a transgression with a 23-year-old editorial assistant, Jim has been sacked from his job, and now his and Franny's marriage is on the rocks. Charles and Lawrence are feeling divided over their future, Bobby is mired in debt problems and stuck in a relationship that's pulling in opposite directions and his girlfriend Carmen, super-fit personal trainer and, at 40-something, far too old for Bobby, seems to have realised her mistake. As for Sylvia, she's 18, about to go to college, and determined to lose her virginity before she gets there.

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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

About the Author:

Emma Straub is from New York City. She is the author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures and Other People We Married, and her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, Tin House, The New York Times, and the The Paris Review Daily. She is a staff writer for Rookie. Straub lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn.

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