Vacationland, by Sarah Stonich (2013)

Among this novel’s many strengths is the cast of voices it establishes as its chapters pile up, each told from the point of view of a different character (though there are a few repeats). I’ve long had mixed feelings about this storytelling strategy: what you gain in breadth you can lose in depth. I think of Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin as another novel that takes this tack, and though it’s well worth the read, I didn’t feel that it did the main thing I want a novel to do: take me deeply into one story, whatever the parameters of that story might be. In what felt to me like masterful timing, at the precise moment that Vacationland begins to feel as if it’s going to construct itself as a broad, shallow pool, it begins to connect its disparate characters and dives deeper.

The novel revolves around a remote, rustic resort in the far north of Minnesota called Naledi, owned and managed first by a Czech émigré named Vaclav Machutova and then by his granddaughter, Meg. Because the story is told from the viewpoint of so many different people – whose connection to Naledi often is not immediately clear – we find out about Vac and Meg only slowly, but this ends up being enormously satisfying, partly because both these main characters are guarded people who do not give up their secrets easily, so being let into their inner lives gradually feels right. Vaclav (pronounced “fucklove” we are told in one of many, many great lines) is taciturn, hardworking, sad, and, when he feels someone has earned it, generous. Meg, a visual artist who has earned enough notoriety to support herself through her painting, has inherited much of her grandfather’s toughness.

The point-of-view characters include a former addict once done a good turn by Vaclav who now works at a rehab clinic frequented by pop stars; a pair of elderly sisters set on helping their other sister to end her life; a descendent of Indians ancestral to the land on which Naledi sits whose wife has just left him; and another local man (named Alpo Lahti) who has taken to thinking of his large, bucolic front yard as a work of art that he fastidiously maintains. The first paragraph of Alpo Lahti’s chapter, in which we drive up the road that leads to his house, combines a lot of what’s great about Stonich’s writing: her careful description of landscapes; her ability to frame a story quickly and compellingly; and the wry current of humor always flowing just beneath the surface:

Just northeast of town the road cuts through a deep ridge of Precambrian rock that once separated remote from isolated, until timber barons needed to get at the forests on the other side and blasted through it. The rock walls on either side of the road are embossed with bore marks, appearing as if large, stiff snakes had cleaved the greenstone to open the passage. Beyond the ridge, the road ribbons toaward the border, hemmed by dusty spruce and jack pine poking from moss, with stone erupting from the crust in a dozen stone shades and orange patches of scabby lichen providing an occasional thrill of color. In the few stands of old-growth pine that escaped logging, holy-postcard sunlight stabs through, blessing or warning those traveling any farther north. Ten miles into the boreal dim, the road makes a drunken swale around glacial boulders, and Lahti’s Hobby is revealed like a startling pop-up page in a children’s book.

One of my favorite characters is the 90-year old Ursa Olson, true to her opinions and impulses to a fault. Intimately connected to her granddaughter Cassi, she gets along less well with her daughter, Carina, a yogi vegan. (Carina’s diet gives her husband gas and when Ursa smells it she hollers, “Postcard from shit!”). Carina has plans to remodel Ursa’s house after she dies, and when a contractor spoils the secret, Ursa has the kitchen, Carina’s favorite part of the house, torn out from floor to ceiling. A great pleasure of the book is finding out how these charcters are connected to Vac, Meg, and Naledi, and Stonich paces these revelations beautifully, so I won’t say much about them here, but Ursa’s is particularly memorable. Cassi, her granddaughter, is also a point of view character. We spend time with her lost in a bog, where she composes aloud her own haikus to keep herself company. Recalling a recent trip in Ursa’s car when the old woman had hit a deer and then showed Cassi the proper way to field dress it, she comes up with this one: Stupid-ass Bambi / Bloody fur on my bumper / Pretty little lunch.

Vacationland isn’t just clever, its also sad, giving it a satisfying emotional range. We accompany one character on a crashing passenger plane – though “crashing” isn’t quite right, because the tragedy unfolds over many minutes (and pages). And Vaclav’s life has been filled with hard work and disappointment, though punctuated with moments of generosity and joy. All the characters, in fact, carry some kind of sorrow. But this doesn’t take the book anywhere close to being maudlin or overdone, and Stonich’s cleverness doesn’t cheapen the book’s darker shades. Overall it’s a lovely work – tightly crafted, wonderfully written, and well worth the read.