VACATION

"The hotel rose overhead, a structure of plaster and dust, a few pieces of it torn away like an abandoned site. Strips of yellowing grass between parking lots. Above, the pinkish sky. Myers could be anywhere right now. Further proof of the great lack of imagination on the part of humanity: to look at the land and see the sameness that one sees in one's heart. No one should have to spend their life going through places like this."
—page 19, Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth

A man, Myers, discovers that his wife is following another man around after work and begins to follow her. The man is unaware that he is being followed. The wife is unaware that Myers is following her. Myers realizes he went to college with the followed man, Gray. Another woman is searching for her biological father upon the death of her mother. Their paths will cross, but none of them will really meet one another.

The characters of the story wander about without any real purpose. Well, Myer may have a reason for his wandering and his want of revenge, but even his wandering is somewhat aimless.

These characters are each on vacation, in different senses of the word. Some are on vacation from their marriages or other relationships; some are on vacation from work, properly or not; some are fleeing for their lives; some are fleeing from their lives.

The novel is an odd book in that the characters are extremely divorced from one another, their relationships with one another atomized, their emotions locked away and guarded. They don't even seem to really know themselves. All of this distance between them and from them (as a reader) makes it hard to really grasp who they are.

And yet we know exactly who they are because we have lived their lives, or at least portions of their empty lives of despair and angst in moments of our own lives. These moments of recognition are what have made the novel resonate for me for a number of weeks since completing it. I may not remember the characters, since I never really got to meet them, but I do remember how they made me feel.