Deb Olin Unferth - Vacation

In this enthralling headscratcher of a first novel, Unferth weaves an intricate tale of quests and escapes, of leaving and following. Publishers Weekly

Deb Olin Unferth is, I believe, one of the crucial literary artists of her generation. Her vision evokes high comedy and the violence of tragedy heard through voices exquisitely particular to her mind.

Diane Williams, author of It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature

Unferth is always playing a sort of life-or-death word game. She will seize a word and wring all meanings from it, like a terrier worrying a bone... in their very abstraction the descriptions can be truly poignant.

Madison Smartt Bell, The New York Times Book Review

Told in a lean voice that feels completely new, youll be pleased to discover that its all quite funny, too.

Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Sentence by sentence, Unferth surprises and makes profound sense of what it is to be alive. Loud applause should follow this accomplishedentertaining, funny, sad, solemnbook. Christine Schutt, author of Florida

For most people, traveling is supposed to be a time of personal rejuvenation and general R&Ra period when you shouldnt have to do anything more strenuous than order a frozen margarita. Deb Olin Unferths inventive debut novel, Vacation, turns that idea on its head. Her characters might visit foreign beaches and linger in Internet cafes, but they are primarily careening into existential crisis... her book excels at exploring the remote reaches of her characters psyches.

Time Out New York

Unferths sentences are dazzling... But Vacation s trickiest trick is cartwheeling along the border between the simplicity of allegory and the complexity of true human frailty. Makes you love these characters, too. Philadelphia City Paper

[ Vacation ] showcases Unferths unbridled gift for inspired narrative wordplay.

Elle

The quirky, metafictional gloom is part of the charm of this novel and is a critical gear in the apparatus that propels it to its lonely conclusion in a far-flung corner of the earth. Bookforum

Vacation is fantastic... Funny, bleak, often brilliant, Vacation once again proves that Unferth can perform a linguistic high-wire act all her own. Esquire

Vacation, Deb Olin Unferths dreamy, surreal debut novel, reads like an extended hallucination or out-of-body experience, as unsettling as it is compelling.

The Village Voice

Unferth skillfully layers what for another writer might be throwaway details into a gripping psychological adventure, and the persistence of her writing turns a rather abstract work... from a postmodern anti-narrative into prose that grips the reader like a Jane Austen novel. Review of Contemporary Fiction

Fans of Dave Eggerss ever estimable literary concern McSweeneys are finally catching onto what fans of Diane Williamss unsung journal NOON have been savoring for years: the tidy, tuneful uncertainties that weave to form the fictions of Deb Olin Unferth. Boston Phoenix

The genius of this sad, poignant, and hilarious book is its capacity to demonstrate how hollow our destinations can be, while simultaneously showing how much fun can be had in the going. American Book Review

A lyrical web of vignettes, letters, e-mails and confessions told from multiple points of view, Vacation threads the themes of loss, travel, escape, revenge, abandonment, disillusionment, fathers, daughters and betrayal. Richmond Style Weekly

A t the heart of Deb Olin Unferths astonishing, unsettling first novel is the idea and intention of vacation: What do we escape from? Where do we go?

Rain Taxi

Unferth is a hero... She has shown up early to the party with a books worth of undeniably unique prose. All there is left to do is to sit back and wait for the imitators. Splice Today

Vacation is a remarkable and ambitious must-read, and Unferth herself an exciting writer to keep watch on. Without a doubt, there are more great things still to come. New Pages

It is a formidable task to produce work that asks the big questions in a way that does justice to the enormity of those questions... Unferths imaginative, fractured, uncompromising Vacation is urgently contemporary without failing to strike at the heart of the most enduring human concerns. Rumpus

Vacation

Vacation

deb olin unferth

McSWEENEYS

Grove Press

Copyright 2008, 2010 by Deb Olin Unferth

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

First published in 2008 by McSweeneys Books, San Francisco

Printed in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4472-0

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of John Kenneth Unferth (19652004)

Chapter One

CLAIRE

I recall only one sentence that she said. She said it all the time. Every day was an occasion. If she had to be away on a shoot, she said it to my father. If I had to take cough syrup, she said it to me. She said it to the family dog before his operation. It was her wisdom. She said it with pride. What my mother said was: You wont even feel it.

I was born in the city. My father was a bank man, my mother starred in soaps. We lived like the famous in a house by the park and I woke to a vase of fresh tulips each day. We had long hallways and long tablecloths. My mother had rooms full of clothes. So many strangers gave us presents that we had a man to pen our thank-yous. Photographers slept outside the house.

One day when I was five, my mother was hit by a car and she felt it and she died and we felt it. We went away for a while, paid off our debts from afar, tried to live without her. We came back to the city. My fathers business spoiled dollar by dollar. We lived on her money. Each year we grew poorer. We sold the house and moved into a smaller house and then into a large rented apartment, then into a smaller one. We moved around the city, fitting into smaller and smaller spaces, each time carrying our valuables up and down stairwaysthe chests, the paintings, the family china, the sofas, the wardrobes. We finally landed in the smallest studio with the dog and our little cat and all of our furniture and light fixtures and jewelry. We laid out the expensive rugs one on top of another on the floor. We hung the paintings floor to low ceiling. It was in this room that my father became sick and couldnt work. We sold our things off one by one, peeled up a rug or took down a picture, and in this way we paid the medical bills and the other bills and we lived, somewhat. When the floor and walls were bare and the room was mostly cleared out, my father had one more thing to tell me. Early in our marriage, he said, your mother ran off with someone else and she came back pregnant. You are not my daughter.