The Vacationers – Cannonball Read 17

Seeing how a hand carves out meaning with a pencil point lets us remember that the human touch is essential

Act of God by Jill Ciment

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Accident/A Day's News by Christa Wolf

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

And Now You can Go by Vendela Vida

Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather

The Two of Them by Joanna Russ

June 26, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Act of God – 3/5 Stars This is a funny and odd little book by a writer I don’t really know, but as I did a little research into has been writing and publishing for a while. This book is told from an ever-shifting third person limited perspective following different women who are responding to a crisis they all share. Kat and her twin sister Edith are older twins living in the rent-controlled apartment that belonged to their late mother. Their mother was a famous […]

Double Bingo, so at least this book was good for something

October 27, 2018 by Ellesfena Leave a Comment

Ugh, I didn’t enjoy this book in the slightest, which I guess makes sense since it fills the Not My Wheelhouse square for Bingo. The Vacationers is the story of a family from New York that goes on vacation to Mallorca, along with their oldest son’s girlfriend, and the best friend of the wife and his husband. I would use names here to help distinguish between characters but I’ve honestly forgotten half of them already. Man, I just. . . I really hated this book. […]

A highly enjoyable holiday from hell

October 26, 2014 by popcultureboy Leave a Comment

I thoroughly enjoyed Straub’s debut novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and feel we should gloss over the embarrassingly long time it took me to clock that she is daughter of Peter Straub. So when The Vacationers came along and seemed to be setting itself up to be everything Seating Arrangements should have been but wasn’t, I was sold. The blurb tells you it’s “an irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca” […]

Family Vacations: Are They Ever Fun?

September 5, 2014 by ModernLove Leave a Comment

This is another one of the books I picked up to take on vacation. I mean, while on vacation with ones family, what better to read about than…a family on vacation? Thankfully, mine doesn’t have nearly as many issues as the Post family does. Franny and Jim are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary, while trying to recover from Jim’s affair with a much younger woman. Not only might it cost him his marriage, but it cost him his job. Sylvia has just graduated high school […]

It wasn’t a horror novel like I thought, but a family vacation can be very scary.

August 28, 2014 by scootsa1000 Leave a Comment

I had no idea who Emma Straub was until I picked this off of the new release table at the library last week. I assumed that maybe she was Peter Straub’s daughter, and thought I was getting myself a fun horror story for the end of the summer. Well. I don’t know if she is actually related to Peter. Maybe? And this was actually a pretty fun book. I’d compare her writing toJonathan Tropper — telling a difficult story with humor and wit. And while I […]

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