Vacation

by Deb Olin Unferth

"A man follows his wife. The wife follows a stranger. The stranger leaves town and the man goes after him, determined to settle the score. But the man is not the only one looking for the stranger, and the stranger has troubles of his own." The earth quakes, a boy leaps out a window, and a dolphin swims free. Of course people have adventures of this kind - of course! of course! - but we've never heard of it before. With deadpan humor and skewed wordplay, Deb Olin Unferth weaves a mystery of hope and heartbreak.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Literature, Humor, Magical Realism

137 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 2008

About the author

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novel Barn 8 and the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, NOON, the New York Times, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, three Pushcart Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she also runs the Pen City Writers, a creative writing program at a penitentiary in southern Texas.

Reviews

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh stunning, my goodness, what a wonderful, devastating book. I was bewildered and despondent for an entire evening after I finished reading this for the second time in a row (just one of the benefits of being a copyeditor!). Much like Arkansas, the last book I worked on for McSweeney's, at a certain point (this one is clearly marked, by an earthquake), you have a sharp intake of breath because you realize that things are just going to get worse and worse and there's nothing you can do to slow it down or wish it better.

But oh, it's a fantastic journey to get there. And also, this book has something of a restorative quality, for me, on a meta sort of level: it reaffirms my faith in uniqueness. (I know that's kind of a played-out word, but it's also totally accurate, so what else should I say?) I mean, Deb not only has an utterly original way with words — which is weird and funny and sad and disassociating and closening too — but the book is extremely twisty, plotwise. You keep thinking you know what story you're reading, and then you are just completely wrong, over and over.

Shivery-good. Honest. Get a copy as soon as it comes out.

***

PS: Unusually, when I finished the copyedit I had to hand off the pages to Deb herself, and she was SO NICE to me. I love that.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

"People do things like this, they do, and if it doesn't make them happy, at least it keeps them alive."

A man, Myers, searches for an old classmate he hasn't seen or talked to in years so that he can kill him.

The two men at the center of this novel aren't remarkable, if anything they are painfully average. They aren't down and out losers, but they are the type of person who has had their life and personality grinded out of them by everyday life. They are faceless people you have to share your personal space with on the morning commute, or the person one car over from you staring straight ahead in the daily bumper to bumper rush hour congestion. The unremarkable qualities of the characters is part of this book's remarkableness. This could easily be another novel of discontent, or of urban / suburban angst over the 'unfairness' of life not dealing out cards that make us all the geniuses we know ourselves to be. These characters just trudge through life, and then something happens and one of them begins to trudge along on a murderous trail after another, who unwittingly leads both of them from the dreary hell-hole of Syracuse New York (does anyone out there actually like Central New York cities? Where are the novels that are thinly disguised love letters to Syracuse or Rochester or Utica?) to Central America.

I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of fractured narrative style, the inventiveness, with the depiction of the characters. I liked that there was no smug chuckle at them to be heard through the pages while the story swirled and unfolded in a pleasing non-linear fashion. There was non of the ironic wink wink nudge nudge that I almost expect in works published by McSweeney's (or maybe I'm just expecting everyone to be like Dave Eggers, who hangs like a dark cloud over everything they do, even though most books have nothing similar with him). I couldn't help feeling a little sad after reading this book that this is one of the 'lesser' known McSweeney's books, but it's one of the more coherently realized novels I've read by them.

Why didn't this book get more attention? Why didn't I pay any attention to it? I wouldn't have even read it if Karen hadn't found it at the Housing Works dollar book sale (a dollar for this wonderful book! And it appears to be unread, without any noticeable shelf wear. Sharp corners, unbroken spine. A new book for a dollar!) and told me that Oriana had loved this one, or that it was the first book she ever read for work that she really like, or something like that.

I'd recommend keeping an eye out for this one and giving it a chance. It's one of the gems hiding in McSweeney's backlist.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

What do certain authors have against inverted commas?

"I am speaking now. You know I am speaking because this in inverted commas."

Now you do not know I am speaking unless the author uses a dialogue tag. This technique creates a sense of distance or alienation, juxtaposed with the main text blah blah blah, and on top of this, it's grammatically incorrect.

Some writers are speech mark snubbers. Don't get me wrong. I understand. I side with Vonnegut and find the semicolon hideous. This author also uses no semicolons. However. Punctuation isn't frightening. It has so many exciting functions.

So I say: Learn to love the curvy swirl of the speech mark! Aren't they rather cute when printed? Don't our brains also react to them differently, allowing us respite from the prose, keeping our visual responses varied?

See, having no inverted commas can impair a piece of work. Reading a book in one font, our eyes need punctuation as a visual stimulus away from the words. Speech marks shift the register of a scene and help us connect with a book in a different way. This stylistic trait isn't, to my eye, particularly useful.

Anyway.

Vacation is a McSweeney's publication, and who doesn't love the middle name Olin? If I had Olin as my middle name, I would certainly chose to publish under it. It is clear some sweat has gone into this decision. Deborah Unferth looks oddly hideous, and Deb Unferth is a little too concise. Olin is a bizarre name and so deserves credit on the cover!

Well done Deb!

I couldn't quite find the voice in this one. The narrator sounded like a stoned psychiatrist who reads poems at the Hip-Hop NY Poetry Slam, describing potential husband/wife case studies to a group of sleepy students. There are range of narrative voices, and the register is the same in each: gently poetic, mildly comic, gropingly grim.

The structure/form is intriguing here, but the world this book presents bears no resemblance to our own. Given the reliance on lyrical observations, each pulling for an emotional response, this seems to undo the novel.

Never mind. Olin is a fabulous middle name.

[tee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was sufficiently intrigued by this book. It had that little something that kept me turning the pages, it invoked curiosity, it was strange as fuck. It was published by McSweeney's, so I was biased before I even started - the gorgeous hard cover added to the tingling in my pants. It's wide girth, perfect crisp print, pleasing spacing on the sides of the pages; visually, it was stimulating. Once the words travelled through my eyeballs and hit the optic disc, travelled through the optic nerve and registered in my brain - well that's where things weren't as fabulous. But still pretty darned good.

Unferth has a interesting way of writing, as trite as that sounds; and also, she read as somewhat masculine. The only reason I say this, is I kept envisioning a male author behind the helm. Not that it matters either way, but it kept taking me aback. I just googled her photo just to check for any transgenderism. Okay, I'm off on a tangent already, but her writing is strange and I'm not able to explain what I mean exactly. So for now, let's just blame it on gender-confusion. Which is my issue, no-one elses. And not really an issue, per se, just an aside because I can't seem to write reviews without being completely fucking ridiculous about things.

I do so love Unferth's descriptions, "a strip of a woman and her tiny, mittened girl." I want to eat that sentence. Another:- "She hadn't been raised by warm people. Her father had a phony laugh. Her mother was prim, airtight, walked around looking cheated. The two of them appeared every other season, perched on their seats as if slightly offended by their surroundings and who was in them, and then melted back into the Midwest."

If you write fiction yourself, you'll find Unferth's unique way of writing tainting your own style. Short choppy sentence, brief paragraphs, lack of inverted commas for speech - I enjoyed all of this. The thoughts in my head started to take on her style. It was one of those books that affects the way you see your life, while you're reading it. You look up and things are tangerine-hazed, and a little off-centre. I think I like her as a person too, which always helps - reading through an interview on bookslut with Unferth, she says, "I think what drives me the most are desire and fear. I think: I want to write this book. I can see it in my mind, it's perfectly formed, the structure is sound. It's like an apple, it's like something in nature. Why can't I get it to look the same on the page? Why? So bewilderment is part of it too, I guess. And stubbornness." I can indentify with that. So much.

Finishing up her interview, she says, "Each morning I woke up and said, I have to write this or I will die. It's strange because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have died but that's what it felt like. I just wanted to write it so badly. I felt like it was a long song with lots of parts and I wanted to hear what it would sound like if I could get all the parts where they belonged. I hope they are mostly where they belong now."

I'm glad Unferth didn't die, and that this book was written - it was so different from the norm - although, disjointed and odd. It's the kind of book I struggle recommending to people because you'll either think it's complete bullshit, or you'll love it's playfulness. I'll leave you with a few more underlined quotes.

"She stopped, sat on a bench on the loudest corner the earth had ever known. A catastrophe of buses and drillings, the dash of the taxi, the rush and halt, the tamping down of the cement, the suck of air in, the press of it out, the slow sink of the city, the spread of tar, the lifting of it, the footsteps going through, the out and out of breaths."

And perhaps my favourite, "His rage was a saw, going back and forth, cutting through arteries, hers."

Mmmm, delicious.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been with this book now for a long time out of sheer love of it. Every chapter is chopped up into little pieces, and every piece is almost like it's own little story, like Unferth dropped a tiny explorative device into the brain-body of one of her characters for a moment, so the piece is for a snap-shot moment soaking and burbling in there, recording all the stuff of the aching body, the wandering body, the unconscious and the dream images, and also the physical earth and all its sameness/weirdness. I don't know how else to explain the book. The dialogue, both inner and outer, is wonderful--and I mean truly delightful--and the way the characters intersect all over the continent is surprising. It is a sad story, I won't lie. Every character was nothing like me and just like me all at once. I liked that a lot, even if it made me squirm sometimes at my own oddities, preversities, and insecurities. The narrative is real and unreal. Reading this put me into a different sort of headspace.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, seriously I don't get it. Not devastating, just depressing. I hate every character in this book, they're all stupid. It's not remotely funny, even in a sarcastic way. The pacing is quick and interesting, and Unferth is a master with the words. But it was just damn depressing.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very disjointed and I had a hard time staying interested.

[Annett · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's kind of fascinating how an interesting idea can lead to such a boring story.

[Stephen Theaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is typeset, designed and manufactured with wonderful skill and attention to detail. The paper's so soft you could use it to upgrade your baby's bottom. Holding the book in your hands feels luxurious; reading from it is a privilege.

In comparison, the novel itself was just okay. It's nicely written, if a bit bland. The narration is arch and distanced, which suits the subject matter but becomes a bit dull after a while. It jumps around in time quite a bit, often from one paragraph to the next - as a result it gives away the ending long before you get there, making the rest of the book a bit of a chore. Maybe that's too strong a word, because the rest is still fairly enjoyable to read, but from about halfway in you stop learning anything new about anything that's going on, other than the minor details; you're just watching things play out in more or less the way you expected, and my enthusiasm for the book waned the longer it took to get there.

The other main problem is that the plot relies upon the characters being stupid, and not just normal everyday people stupid, but Neighbours stupid. By that I mean the type of plot (typical of Neighbours) where a character is angry or suspicious about something their partner is up to, but they don't just try to clear things up - purely because that would short-circuit the plot. Instead, they decide their partner would have told them already if they really loved them, and stew about it until their partner leaves them for being such a grump. The entire plot of this novel derives from such dopiness. Maybe it makes sense for these characters to not talk to each other - the author gives them reasons for not doing so - but over the course of years it's hard to believe no one ever got drunk and said something like, "So, you've been following this guy around?" or "Tell me about the time you jumped out of a window."

The story makes a bit more sense to me when considered as a metaphor, or a fable, and the characters as symbols, of what we do in life, for questions of leaving and staying, and so on. There's something being said about relationships, and following each other, and routes not taken, and that kind of thing. But I'm not sure I agree with what is being said. The worst that can happen to a married couple in this book is to sit and watch television together, and then talk about it. That really didn't seem so bad to me: in fact, the characters could really have done with watching a few daft sitcoms to remind themselves what laughter felt like. Almost every character in the book was utterly humourless; to the point of inhumanity, even.

If Vacation had been a film by Wes Anderson, perhaps I would have loved it; if it had an appropriate soundtrack to put me in the right frame of mind; if the characters had been played by actors I like and trust enough to follow on a strange journey; if the foreign locations had been shot in living beauty by a master cinematographer. It had a lot in common with The Darjeeling Limited: both feature characters questing in exotic foreign lands, and both are meticulously crafted, deliberate, and confident of their own worth. But where The Darjeeling Limited instantly became one of my all-time favourite films, Vacation was just that little bit underwhelming.

But take everything I say with a handful of salt: any book lacking aliens or spaceships will struggle to make me totally happy. (I only got through David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia by pretending it was set on Arrakis.) That I even finished this book, despite its shortcomings in the extraterrestrial department, shows it must have been pretty good. All credit to McSweeney's Book Club for getting me to try something new. If I've focused on the negative, it's only because those things preoccupied me while I was reading it: others may find much to love in this book.

[Ava Butzu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished Unferth’s "Vacation" this morning and can’t help but feel that she pulled a couple of numbers on me. After reading the author interview at the end, I sort of wanted to punch her in the face. It’s true that this book elicits moments of John Cheever (“The Swimmer,” in particular) and of Virginia Woolf and of Samuel Beckett. If you have read “Waiting for Godot?” then you are familiar with the feeling that you are missing something important that Beckett wants us to figure out about our existence. It’s infuriating. Probably what infuriates me most about his work (along with that of Donald Barthelme, whose novel “The Dead Father” also reminds “Vacation,” ) is that I just cannot wrap my head around it in any methodical, precise way.

A plot summary of the book would in no way prepare you to go on the trip that this novel is. A husband begins to follow his wife who is following another man who does not know her. The husband then follows the man to Nicaragua, but the man is actually in Panama. Multiple lives co-exist in almost parallel universes but communicate almost telepathically. And it you think that is confusing, then you haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

In this book, There is no real truth – only the convoluted bending and shaping that we make of the truth to fit our journeys. There is no messiah. There is no salvation. Just vacation. Or perhaps vacation is salvation, depending on, as she says, the variable nature of our “hearts” and “conscience.”

In reading this book with a friend, he was still able to find truth in the narrative. This is what he wrote that struck me as quite meaningful: “It could be pain. Loss. Anger. Divorce. Death of a loved one. All of which come into play throughout the story. The thing is, though, whether we immediately 'feel' them or not, those things are still there. And I think we do feel them. Us. People.”

At its core, this is a story of loss and of our hopefulness in seeking to find what we have lost. Love, faith, purpose, or our identity. But all of the characters seem to bumble about, or perhaps to be shaken by falls or earthquakes or storms of a sort, so that they end up never really connecting. Instead, they all seem to sustain injuries of sorts and, as you so astutely wrote, they DO feel it. It DOES hurt. What a sad, pathetic life it is.

So perhaps the book does not fulfill my desire for purpose or meaning. But I still count it among some of the most compelling, thought-provoking narratives I have read. It’s quite the crafted text, densely layered. It does bear another reading. The characters don’t seem “real,” and that is where my reference to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and Barthelme’s “The Dead Father” come into play. Also, Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, especially “Ghosts.” It makes me reconsider the idea of using character types, rather flat at times, to make astute points about humanity. One would think such a technique would fall flat (hah!), but it actually drives me further to consider these themes.

[Mags · Rating 2 out of 5]

I waited...six or seven years for this. I could never find a copy during my book hunts. When my eyes passed over this during a tired, sleepy trip to a used bookstore in underground Chicago, I couldn’t believe it. I had to do a double-take because I didn’t really know what it looked like, spine-facing. But it was it.

Now, I don’t know if my high expectations (based on my angsty, pretentious, post-teenage phase with which I first read the preview of this book) eventually caused its ruin. We can never know. 20-year-old me didn’t get to read it.

The story follows a man who’s following his wife who’s following a dead man walking (a.k.a. first man’s college schoolmate whom he hasn’t seen in years). It takes us from New York state to Nicaragua and bits of Panama. Sounds promising, right? Well...

Paths crossed and crossed some more. Questions slightly answered. There are senseless fights between poorly developed characters (yes, including the main ones) that I didn’t give two shits about. I wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire.

Anyhow, we started the story at the deep end and we stayed there so that the author can say she’s mysterious like that. Everything is unnecessarily clouded in enigma to give it substance and depth (and then fails). She doesn’t use quotation marks to indicate a conversation because it’s very important to be minimalistic and talk in cropped, Tumblr-worthy sentences. The ending was the same nature as the rest—something HAS to happen, or the reader might think this is a waste of time. God forbid!

I’d really hate to generalize, but McSweeney’s [publisher] is not reeling me in. I have yet read something they published that I’d liked. Now I could imagine them as a group of literate “gods” who determine which sounds “deep enough” or not. I don’t want to assume but something also tells me I’m not far off mark.

[heptagrammaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

(This isn't going to make sense. Proceed with caution. Sprinkle with absurdism.)

Void-of-space-dark. A little sparkly. With stars. And ouroboros-like nebulas eating their tales. Swirling.

Deb Olin Unferth's Vacation has the breath-taking, chest-imploding, spine-bending, heart-wringing, skull-caving (also breaking, also shattering-in-34-pieces) merciless utter beauty of an incomprehensible strange land. People wander this strange land, very like and very unlike each other. Birds, unitary and blotting-out-the-sky-swarming, fly across its skies. There're dolphins in its seas, but also in cages, but also in trucks, wriggling on stretcher, surrounded by saltwater-soaked mattresses.

It's a story about seeking out family, and failing to do so. It's about the failure to communicate, things said and unsaid hanging in the air, choking. It's about a leap without faith, and a leap full of it.

Out the window. Hurtling. Into the ocean. Humanity rest forevermore.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this was something of a vacation, indeed. Not the in-Florida-with-the-family-on-the 4th of July-type vacation, but more of a literal vacating. Of my usual, comfortable space. Of the traditional narrative retreat I usually seek. Of the conventional, the simple, the everyday. The intro included with this profile summarizes the plot as clearly as is possible, I suppose. (No easy feat.) So I'll avoid that and simply encourage anyone looking for a new voice, a journey through a strange-yet familiar-landscape, and wonderful-yet sad-escape to read Vacation. Bon voyage.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read too many authors who can write with a "stream-of-craziness" style like Deb. Her characters' flaws become endearing and sensible. You want to hug 'em and slap the crap out of 'em. Her settings are mundane and exotic. Life itself becomes a character, waiting around a corner to buy you a cup of coffee or work your ass over with brass knuckles. Fun and freaky, hopelessly hopeful, it makes you examine the familiar strangers who inhabit your daily life. Especially the one in the mirror.

[Jamie Dacyczyn]

DNFed. Got to about 50 pages before the lack of quotation marks started to drive me crazy. After that many pages, I should be able to tell someone during the day what the book I'm reading is about...but I couldn't. Each time I tried to start up again, I'd have to back up a few pages to remember what was going on. Even now writing this, I couldn't tell you what this book was about, that's how forgettable it was for me. "I think there was a character named Matt or Mark, and.....there were no quotation marks."

[Summer Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an odd, delightful, poignant tumbleweed of a book. A great companion read to Vendela Vida for its sense of unraveling. Absurd in a good way for the most part, I was less drawn in by one of the story elements that was prominent towards the end, but definitely worth it. A book that has stayed with me. (And for anyone who is curious about Unferth, please google her short story about turtles: it is amazing.)

[Matt Briggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confounded by the good reception this book has received. It has a nicely executed numb tone and some very nice sentence fragments placed in good spots. In writing this down now there were some good things, but in general the book felt kind of chilly and addled to me.

[Kaystrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the afterward was an important part of this book for me. What a trip...

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because Joseph Fink sited it as an inspiration for Welcome to Night Vale. It is very amusing to me how the two are nothing alike—but, entirely alike at once.

[derek allard · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is one of my favorite writers (her short story collection, Wait Till You See Me Dance, is one of the best things I've read in years) and this earlier novel is very good. Her writing is lyrical and her style is wonderful. This isn't a feel good story but it's an honest story and she does a great job of weaving in perspectives from seemingly inconsequential characters into the plot. Highly recommended.

[Sarah B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired the podcast Welcome to Nightvale which is why I read it. But it was definitely weird, not really sure the plot, don't really know what this was.

[Patrick Faller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through this labryinthian narrative moves Myers, a young corporate cog who chases after the man he believes his wife has been following on an errand of her own heart. Myers's journey leads him to Syracuse and then to Nicaragua, where he endures and earthquake, loses his job, and winds up on a boat in the middle of an ocean, part of an entourage accompanying a world-famous dolphin "un-trainer" who has made a career out of freeing captive porpoises used in television and films. Unferth produces sentences that snap and cut the heart: "They were joined, after all, just by paper, mostly, and by awkwardly shaped pieces of wood, porcelain, glass, metal, bits of cloth, ideas about soap, beliefs about historical events, sleeping habits, memories of rainfalls and other watery things (oceans, ponds, faucets) that they had visited or seen together in pictures." At times, this attention to the line causes Unferth's story to unravel a bit; clearly the theme of the vacation--the contradiction in traveling both to escape and to find--is as important to the novel's success as is the sense of the characters's reality, desires and fears; most of the characters, especially the periphery characters and Grey, the man whom Myers follows, seem to stand up as caricatures with big voices and sharp minds. But the heart still stings each time any one of them, Myers especially, winds up just short of finding the one he or she searches for, and there's a deep truth to the way Unferth structures her story, maintaining in each line a sense of the unrequited desire and longing for the ones her characters love but have missed, neglected, or let go. This is an admirable feat for any novelist to have accomplished, and reason to take a turn getting lost, following Myers, and Unferth--may her next effort be so emotionally rewarding.

[Alex V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book last week but waited a bit to see what my reaction would be. Like an exotic tea, you have to give books like this time to steep, a moment to cool off before really seeing what it tastes like. Also like exotic teas, it is very easy to get caught up in the packaging - this book, like most McSweeney's books, is gorgeous. The text on the page seems almost embossed on wedding announcement paper tinted the slightest possible shade of green. The sentences and paragraphs laid out in that text bear a similar care, they are placed just so. This is, and I say this with no denigration implied, the kind of novel I expect poets would enjoy.

But, zoom out from all its crystalline detail and the book seemed a little cold and unbelievable. The details of a marriage in jeopardy are hard to depict because they are so mundane, and this book circumvents that with far-flung locales, poorly-thought-through (by the characters, not the author) quests and, maybe the chilliest of all, shocking cordiality. The characters go about being stupid in ultimately a very adult manner, and maybe I wanted some rashness of character to coincide with their actions. Like many exotic teas, once you get past the tale of origin and special instructions and the really cool tin it came in and reveling in the combined experience, I feel like I drank some hot water.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

People do things like this, they do, and if it doesn't make them happy, at least it keeps them alive.
- the wife

This is a novel about following people, none of the followers really having any idea who s/he is following, the followers know that s/he is really following because s/he is lost; it is a novel about leaving, which happens if you follow someone that insistently; and about drowning, drowning with an awareness that you are headed for the bottom, that you will not resurface, yet continuing to kick, to struggle, but to propel yourself in the wrong direction. It is about people who are like most people, who at the same time know they are like most people and think maybe that's why they can't figure out how to be happy. It is also a very funny novel, and I am very glad I just bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica and not to Nicaragua.

Also, the production values and design are beautiful. Take that, Kindle.

[kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oriana recommended this book to me, saying "You think you know what kind of book you're reading, and then it keeps changing into something completely different than you expected." And she's exactly right. I read much of this book on an airplane and while traveling (I figured it was appropriate to read on vacation), so I didn't give it the full attention I would have liked. I'll definitely reread this book. Also -- the package is absolutely lovely -- luscious paper, fancy three-piece paper/cloth binding -- the kind of book that feels like an indulgence to read!

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to be able to give this book a rating of ??? because I don't know whether I liked it or not. It's a compelling story, but confusing and maddening as the characters constantly make assumptions about each other instead of talking. None of them, however, appear to be able to talk about their feelings (not that unusual, I know). Peripheral characters are introduced long before we discover their connections to the main characters, and their words resemble court testimony, while the two that the story focuses on are followed and observed in the third person. Confusing.

[Jeffrey Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Myers, no first name given, is the protagonist. His wife starts following Myers’ best friend, Gray. Gray’s marriage has fallen apart and the marriage between Myers and his wife is in the process of doing so. So Myers goes in search of Gray. He (Myers) follows him (Gray) to Nicaragua, or at least he thinks that is where he is. He loses his job. He gets into more and more trouble as time goes on. Strange vacation. Deb Olin Unferth is a very talented writer. I can recommend this and other works by her for those who are not put off by her combination of bleakness and hope.

[Kathrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

AMAZING. Best novel I've read all year. I don't seem to remember how to write book reviews all of a sudden -- all I can say is I wish this book was the only book on my bookshelf and that it was 20,000,000 pages long. I wish Unferth would just write forever. Really. Just. Really.

[PANK Magazine · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're such big fans of Unferth here at PANK, we're probably creepy. You must read this book.

[Gwendolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vacation begins with a deceptively simple premise: a man named Myers leaves behind an unsatisfying life and sets out to find Gray, an old college acquaintance whom he believes is somehow connected to the unraveling of his marriage. As Myers follows this thread across a series of increasingly strange encounters, other characters embark on quests of their own, turning the novel into a wandering, often surreal exploration of obsession and escape.

This is the second time I've read Vacation, but the first time I've reviewed it. At its core, I think this is an odyssey. Myers may be searching for a college friend, but that is not really what drives the novel. He is running away from a marriage he no longer understands, particularly his wife's fixation on another man, and from a job that offers him little sense of purpose. The physical journey matters, but the deeper journey is inward. Unferth is far more interested in exploring uncertainty, longing, and self-deception than in the mechanics of the plot itself.

The plot held my interest, but the main draw for me is Unferth's language. She writes with a style that feels entirely her own: clever, strange, and constantly surprising. Lines such as, "You know how it is to want something. Desire builds like a little house in your head and it sits there, half-constructed in your mind," capture her ability to make an abstract feeling suddenly vivid and memorable. Elsewhere, she observes, "People are fakers. That's all we do. Can you think of anything you do that's not done for the precise reason of pretending to be something you're afraid you're not?" Those moments illustrate what I admire most about Unferth’s work. She can be funny, unsettling, philosophical, and emotionally perceptive all within a few sentences.

More than anything, Vacation reminded me how distinctive Unferth's voice is. The novel's dreamlike structure and wandering plot will not work for every reader, but I found myself happily following wherever her imagination led. I plan to read more of her work, largely because so few writers sound like Unferth.