The Vacationers (Riverhead Books)
Skylight Books is proud to welcome back one of our favorite authors, Emma Straub!
For the Post family, a luxurious vacation to the island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is meant as a celebration of Franny and Jim’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and their daughter’s graduation from high school.
The sunlit beaches, mountains, tennis and tapas also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the trip, secrets come to light, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds reopen. Written with Straub’s signature wry humor and tremendous heart,The Vacationers is the richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of change and the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again.
Praise for The Vacationers:
“I would read anything Emma Straub writes. She's a natural talent and a gorgeous and witty storyteller, who makes each sentence of The Vacationers look not only easy, but perfectly real. I came to care so deeply about every single character in this great travelogue of a novel that I found myself unable to go to sleep at night until I was certain they had all landed safely. And they will linger with me, this richly imagined family, long into the future.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
“Witty, big-hearted, and packed with wisdom, The Vacationers is a breezy read that sneaks in its emotional wallops and leaves you smiling for days.”—Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette
“The Vacationers is a beautifully told story that walks the tightrope of family angst and connection with hilarity and truth. . . Straub's writing is deft, clear and wise in ways that will surprise and delight you. It's a beyond the beach read. It's Ms. Straub at her dazzling best.”—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife
“Charming and absorbing, this is a novel that demands to be read in long, satisfying gulps.”—Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements
“We’re sure you’ll see armies of folks reading The Vacationers on the beach over the summer”—Flavorwire
Emma Straub is from New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, Tin House, the New York Times, and the Paris Review Daily. She is a staff writer for Rookie. Straub lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn, New York.