Vacation (Mcsweeneys)

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Review by Carrie Price, 2009-12-01

This book is worth a read, if only for an unusual view of humanity. Everyone experiences it, but few people write about it successfully: human nature is a strange thing.

There are several narratives happening at once, and Ms. Unferth craftily slides back and forth between the three--perhaps four?--stories. I found her writing style mildly tiresome, because of her sometimes awkward blatancy, but I still feel that this book has value as a vignette of the more unusual side of silly humans. Why not pick people apart, warts hairs and all? I think all of us will be able to identify with some aspect of the characters in the book.

Review by Gwendolyn Dawson, 2009-02-01

Vacation is the hilarious account of a husband on a journey to save his marriage. Myers knows something odd is going on with his wife, and to solve the mystery he's forced to take a vacation to seek answers even though he has no idea what he's looking for or where he's going. In its own distinctive style, Vacation bears witness to a raw and irrepressible human spirit.

Unferth is a genius at crafting perfect (and perfectly unusual) sentences. Each page is a treat. This excerpt, in which Myers describes what happens to the accumulated stuff when a couple breaks up, illustrates this story's unique blend of melancholy and humor:
"There were also the mirrors, the photos, and other inaccurate reflections. The razor, the bathtub. The kids and the dog, although they had none. The idea of dog, that. The possibility of dog that now would not be possible. Her mother, or her mother's dislike of him, who would get that? Surely that would come with him. Along with the rooster clock that she loved, that he hated, that she bought when she started to hate him."

Images of drowning are prevalent throughout Vacation, and Unferth masterfully transforms these desperate images into events of great beauty:
"A man struggling in water looks somewhat like the inside of a jewel box or a crystal. The tiny bubbles shine whitely and sparkle. The more the man thrashes, the more it seems that gems and bits of silver and pearl are falling around him, as if he were caught inside a heavy opera costume, as if he were crashing through the stained glass of a cathedral, as if he were wrapped in air and light."

Unfortunately, the primary story is disrupted by a sideshow involving a daughter seeking her dolphin-trainer father. This subplot is never resolved and becomes an unwanted distraction that should have been deleted during the editing process. Despite this imperfection, Vacation is entirely charming and well worth reading.

Review by Carolyn McGuire, 2009-01-09

Normally I finish everybook I start. Even if it is a bad book. I liked the writting style, but found it quite boring.

Review by Brainy Smurf, 2008-10-01

It's been a long time since I've read a book where the characters have kept me rapt enough to try and read it all the way through....I was almost tempted to call off of work for a day!!!

Review by Mark, 2008-09-14

I thought I had a good sense of what Unferth could do with words after I read her extraordinary short story collection "Minor Robberies." But I wasn't prepared for the narrative genius and emotional exploration I found in this novel... Reading "Vacation" is a visceral, sentence-by-sentence experience that's hard to forget. Unferth drags you to an empty and alien place, where people go to get away, and flings you chest-first into their confusions... She makes familiar things look strange and strange things look silly, combing through the fabric of betrayal and misunderstanding that make for bad marriages, bad parents, and bad friends... it's a comedy, I think, but a comedy that hurts. I haven't been the same since I read it.