Soooo… we went on a cruise. There was a lot of music but also a lot of time between flying there… waiting to board…hanging out in the room and reading before bed. Lots of time to read. I finished a 2016/2017 book “The Underground Railroad” which deserves its own review but I had also picked up for the trip a book appropriately called “Vacation” by a woman named Deb Olin Unferth. The book had been recommended by a podcaster I follow who does the “Welcome To Nightvale” and “I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats” podcasts and he said he picked up this book a couple of years ago after he moved to New York and he thought he could write. Then he read the book and realized, “Oh… I can't write at all and I have a lot of work to do.” I thought, that as very high praise and ordered it immediately and I was not disappointed.
The book takes place at various points in NYC, Syracuse NY, Coney Island NY, Panama and various sad, SAD places in Nicaragua. It involves two (at least) shitty marriages and more than a handful of deeply and profoundly damaged, mundane, confused, vaguely interesting characters. It also has a guy who untrains dolphins. Untrains is not a word. Good for Deb.
The concept of the book is unremarkable. Two somewhat damaged people find each other and get married. He thinks he has hit jackpot and she is just looking for something and hoping it is him. It turns out not to be him. She discovers (or thinks she discovers) something about his past (relating to his cartoonish head) and sees it as betrayal and goes off the rails with her own abhorrent behavior. He doesn’t know what happened but discovers it, and ultimately leaves her to find an old college chum (who his wife might have been following around for 4 plus months). The chum is supposed to be in Syracuse (but is not) and then he follows him to Nicaragua (where he isn’t) and loses his job trying to get to the beautiful… Corn Island.
There is another character… the daughter of the untrainer. Searching for her father...
The story is beautifully, cleverly written. Occasionally it verges into the dreaded “look mom no hands” cleverness with language that only comes from people who have spent too much time in writers workshops but there are some brilliant lines, brilliant dialogue and some pretty deep introspection on life, relationships and the treadmill we are all secretly just barely able to teeter forward on each day and know falling, and not breaking our neck or a list a wrist… until we do. It was a GREAT vacation book and I will now go see what else she has written and try and consume that as well. I think, there is a possibility she might be a great writer. It is also an easy read at around 200 pages and that is hard to beat when on Vacation.
Spoiler Alert! It does not necesarily end with sunshine and roses.
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