or the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: Oover the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.
This is a story of 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, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying tale of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
My take: The story built slowly. I thought this was going to be a light easy breezy beach read, but it had some parts that were darker than that. Each character was at some sort of crossroads in their life and had to work through their issues to make a decision and get through to the other side. Ultimately I liked the ending. Ironically, the character I liked the most was Carmen, the son's girlfriend, that all the other characters in the book disliked. She seemed the most genuinely nice.
This is a story of 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, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying tale of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
My take: The story built slowly. I thought this was going to be a light easy breezy beach read, but it had some parts that were darker than that. Each character was at some sort of crossroads in their life and had to work through their issues to make a decision and get through to the other side. Ultimately I liked the ending. Ironically, the character I liked the most was Carmen, the son's girlfriend, that all the other characters in the book disliked. She seemed the most genuinely nice.
