The Actual Family Vacation

The family vacation trope is one as old as time. More commonly seen is films with the likes of the classic National Lampoon films to more recent films like, Vacation and uh … Diary of A Wimpy: Dog Days (a true modern masterpiece). The family vacation trope is a staple of American media. But as times have changed I’ve noticed a shift in the approach of making the family vacation story into the “The Actual Family Vacation” story. The term referring to a vacation film which goes away from the unrealistic narrative conventions of most family vacation films in order to tell a story that feels more like what an actual family vacation experience would be like, often involving things like more mature subject matters, lack of narrative structure, and seemingly have a preference to abruptly end without any major climaxes. Stories like the movie, The Way, Way Back and the book we’ll be focusing on, This One Summer, are what I categorize as “The Actual Family Vacation” stories, as both feature the traits listed prior.
 What makes This One Summer so interesting is its lack of any forced elements in its plot. There are never any moments in this book that couldn't believably happen in reality.The plot with the pregnant girl is kept very down to earth, and while it is brought up often, the conflict is never ever resolved. Which makes sense, seeing as it was just an event that passes by Rose. Nothing of particular importance happens to Rose either. Like a real beach vacation Rose spends most of the book watching movies with her friend or coasting off the waves of the beach. The drama between her parents is something many people have dealt with themselves in some form or fashion. All of it feels like it could've been based off of a real vacation the authors had, nothing dramatized for the sake of the reader’s interest. Rose does at one point overhear her mother and aunt discussing some important things, a cliche of many stories of numerous genres. However it's not uncommon for adults to discuss many of the things going on in their lives amongst one another, and given Rose's lack of anything to occupy her time, it makes sense that she could overhear her parent’s speaking.
Many stories like to dramatize events for the sake of maintaining the audience’s interest or for making the story work better under conventional structure and means, however what kept me reading This One Summer was its ability to just show people on vacation. The reason so many stories are based off true events is because life itself contains many intriguing events that are often more entertaining than what the human mind is capable of creating. This One Summer proves this theory to be correct, creating a fictional story that maintains readers attention to its conclusion, not in spite of its choice to follow a more mundane sequence of events, but because it embraces the mundanity of life to show the reader a world very close to our own.