Review by Tom Keech
An upper-middle-class Manhattan family vacations with two friends in Mallorca at a turning point in everyone’s domestic life. There is a lot of food shopping, cooking, eating, admiration of island vistas, swimming, sunning, sightseeing, and bad tourist driving, as well as middle-aged resignation, failure to commit, much-delayed flickers of maturity, and a small bit of sex. What there is not a lot of is plot. Nothing much happens during the first 200 pages of the story as the seven narrators gradually reveal their backstory. The outcome is pretty predictable, but it’s comforting to watch this smarter-and-richer-than-average family deal with the same kinds of problems that plague ordinary folk.
The plot, which you seem to think doesn’t exist, was in the scenes of food shopping, cooking,sunning,sightseeing and the small bit of sex. That was where readers became aware of how the various family members interacted with each other and revealed the strengths and weaknesses of each relationship, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each character. The outcome of all this action demonstrated how many types of relationships there can be. Relationships can be based on love, based on sex, based on egos, convenience, needs, power, and/or blood. What combination of these is needed for a relationship to survive? We find out in The Vacationers — at least for the seven characters in this story.