Tiny Vices

Siblings take a last-gasp vacation to Mexico in Dahl’s novel.

Something happened to Kathy Talley 30 years ago on a spring break trip to Mexico that made her not want to go back. In the story’s present (it’s set in 2016), she is planning to return because her sister Corina, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, wants to go to the beach again before she loses her memory entirely. Kathy’s other sister Becca and her brother, Pete, who has kidney disease, also plan to come along. Kathy’s husband, Bernard, thinks the trip is an odd idea: “I mean, is it wise? Two sick people? A long car trip? To Mexico?” Readers get glimpses of each of the siblings’ current lives: Corina is divorced, and her ex-husband now lives in their beach house; Becca and her husband are struggling with their troubled teenage son; Pete’s poor health may preclude his participation in the trip. Kathy is a do-gooder who does a lot of volunteer work and takes care of everyone in her life, sometimes at the expense of her own mental health (she almost doesn’t notice that her marriage is falling apart). By the time the group finally leaves for Mexico—eventually with Bernard, Becca’s husband, Toby, and Corina’s caretaker, Imalia, in tow—everyone is feeling very stressed. The trip is a nightmare, and everything that can go wrong, does. There’s a palpable sense of melancholy hanging over the narrative. The pathos is almost too much—on top of everything else, several characters deal with addiction problems. The journey to Mexico doesn’t commence until halfway through this short novel, which lends the first half of the book a drawn-out feeling of anticipation. There’s a lot of complexity crammed into this fairly brief story, and the realism is impressive, but there isn’t much hope or uplift at its conclusion.

A lugubrious family drama.