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The Vacationers
by Emma Straub
A sharp, warm family novel about a Mallorca holiday where long-buried tensions surface, worth reading for its honest portrait of marriage, adult children, and midlife drift.
What It's About
The Vacationers follows the Posts, a Manhattan family whose parents, Franny and Jim, mark their thirty-fifth anniversary with a two-week stay on Mallorca. They are joined by their grown children, a circle of old friends, and the sense that this trip may be one of the last times the family is all together before things change. Nothing dramatic is announced at the start. The tension builds from small irritations, long meals, and the stubborn habits of people who have known one another for decades.
Straub writes in a warm, observant, often funny register, moving between family members so that each gets a turn at the center. The chapters are not built around a single crisis. Instead, slights, old resentments, and private longings accumulate in the heat, and the book trusts the reader to notice what the characters avoid saying. The prose is quick and light on scenery, so the Spanish setting works more as a backdrop for leisure and self-consciousness than as a travelogue.
Reading it feels like sitting in on a holiday you were not invited to: pleasant at first, then increasingly uncomfortable in a way that feels like recognition rather than shock. It is an easy book to read in a few sittings, and its appeal lies in its ordinariness. These characters are generous and self-absorbed by turns, and they are not sure what they want from the next twenty years.
Read this if you…
- enjoy character-driven family novels with a sharp, humane eye
- are curious about midlife marriage and the long tail of old friendships
- want a breezy summer read that still has emotional weight
Skip it if you…
- need a plot with high stakes, mystery, or a clear external threat
- prefer lyrical prose or detailed descriptions of place
Key Ideas
- 1
Vacations as a stress test for long marriages
Holidays strip away the routines that normally keep a couple's frictions manageable. Straub uses the forced closeness of a shared villa to show how a long marriage can be loving and still quietly lonely. The book is less interested in a single betrayal than in the small accommodations spouses make for decades, and what happens when those accommodations stop working in a new setting.
- 2
Adult children and the pull of leaving home
The Posts' children are at a stage where their parents still have opinions about their choices, and they are testing how much independence they can claim. The novel treats these younger characters with real sympathy, showing that their confusion about careers, love, and identity is not so different from their parents' midlife uncertainty. The family's old roles keep resurfacing even as everyone tries to grow out of them.
- 3
Class, money, and the comfort of privilege
The Posts are comfortable, and the book takes that comfort seriously rather than apologizing for it or turning it into a sermon. Money shapes who gets to relax, who pays for what, and who feels entitled to make demands. Straub notices how privilege can make people careless with one another while still allowing them to see themselves as decent.
- 4
Secrets kept inside a family's routines
Much of the drama happens in what goes unsaid during ordinary days: breakfasts, swims, late conversations on terraces. The novel shows how families can hide major truths in plain sight, sustained by politeness and the wish to keep a good trip intact. Readers who enjoy slowly building suspicion and the pleasure of guessing what people are really thinking will find this structure rewarding.
Limitations
Some readers find the characters too comfortable to care much about, and the privileged setting can feel like a world with few real financial worries. The pacing is leisurely, and a few storylines are more sketched than fully developed. The book is also more about tone and observation than about resolving its questions, so readers who want tidy answers may feel unsatisfied. Its emotional register is intimate rather than sweeping, which works well for some and feels slight to others.
Questions Readers Ask
- Who is The Vacationers best suited for?
- It suits readers who like domestic fiction in the tradition of family-centered novels, where the drama comes from people's habits and history rather than from events. If you enjoy noticing what characters don't say, you will likely find it rewarding. It is a good choice for a holiday read or a weekend with a book you can finish quickly.
- Is The Vacationers a good alternative to Elizabeth Strout's novels?
- Both books look closely at ordinary people and the quiet damage families do to one another, but Straub's tone is lighter and more playful, and her plot moves faster. If you want a warmer, more conventional summer novel, Straub is a good fit. If you want deep psychological portraits and a more austere style, Strout will likely satisfy you more.
- Published
- 2014
- ISBN
- 9781594631573
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Category
- Fiction
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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