Every month, Women's Health hosts our 60-second book club, where we invite you to take a quick peek inside a buzzed-about new book and let us know what you think. This month's pick: The Vacationers by Emma Straub (Riverhead Books).
Sure, it's fun to dig your toes into the sand and sip on a drink with an umbrella in it. But one of the best things about going to the beach has to be lying on a towel or sitting on a beach chair with a good book—and we know which one you'll want to dive into first this weekend.
The Vacationers by Emma Straub (Riverhead Books), focuses on the Post family—Franny, Jim, and their children Sylvia and Bobby—during their two-week trip to Mallorca, Spain. Each of the characters is in the middle of a pivotal change, but Jim's drama threatens to upset the balance in everyone else's lives: When the novel opens, he's dealing with the fallout of a mistake that lost him his job at a men's magazine and is threatening his marriage.
In the below scene, Franny, has an unexpected encounter with Lawrence, her best friend Charles's partner, about the turmoil:
"Listen," he said. "I'm really sorry about earlier. About saying something about the magazine, to Jim. I honestly don't know what happened, but I do know that I put my foot in my mouth."
Franny leaned back, drawing her legs up beneath her. She stretched her arms over her head, and then lowered them until they were blocking her eyes. She groaned. Franny had never felt older than she had in the last six months. It was true, of course, that was always true, that you'd never been older than you were at precisely that moment, but Franny had gone from feeling youngish to wizened and crumpled in record time. She could feel the knots in her back tighten, and her sciatic nerve began to send out little waves of distress to the sides of her hips.
"I'm sorry," Lawrence said, not sure if he was apologizing for worsening Franny's mood or for whatever had happened with Jim at the magazine, or both.
"It's okay," Franny said, her eyes still hidden behind her arms. "I'm surprised Charles didn't tell you."
Lawrence sat down on the lounge chair next to Franny's and waited.
"He fucked an intern." She moved her hands and waved them around, as if to say "Abracadabra!" "I know, that's it. Jim fucked an intern. A girl at the magazine, barely older than Sylvia. Twenty-three years old. Her father is on the board, and I guess she told him, and so here we are."
"Oh, Franny," Lawrence said, but she was already sitting up and shaking her head. He had imagined many scenarios for Jim's sudden leave from Gallant, and for the tension in the Post family—prostate cancer, early-onset dementia, an ill-timed conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses—but not this one. Jim and Franny had always seemed happily solid, still capable of goosing each other in the kitchen, as off-putting as it sometimes was."
"No, it's fine. I mean, it's not fine, we've been married for thirty-five years, it is not fine for him to have sex with a twenty-year-old. A twenty-three-year-old. As if there's a difference. I don't know. Thank you. Sylvia knows some, but Bobby doesn't know anything about it, I'm pretty sure, and I'm trying to keep it that way for as long as possible. Maybe forever."
Something that struck us as we read the novel was how real it was…while the plotline is salacious for sure, nothing comes off as feeling clichéd or one-dimensional.
Tell us: What did you think of the excerpt? Do you plan on reading more? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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