Ripley by Patricia Highsmithīecause sociopaths like to take holidays too! Highsmith's much-loved villain heads to Italy in this novel, where he follows and then kills a high-born man he pretends to know from school. The landscape is described so lovingly that you'll curse your own ancestors for not thinking to purchase a similar parcel of land. Maine by Courtney SullivanĪlso set on the rocky shores of chilly Maine, Courtney Sullivan's third novel follows a family getaway cabin through three generations of women. It's better than going to a real wedding, because in this case, you're not required to pay for your own transport to and fro, nor are you expected to bring a gift. There are drunken aunts and slippery old men, sexy bridesmaids and gorgeous scenery.

How many of us forgo our own vacations in favour of attending friends' nuptials? Shipstead's first novel unfolds around a wedding on the coast of Maine. Unlike Wolitzer's book, which is about a teenager away from her parents and learning everything about herself, Whitehead's book is about a boy observing his family's failings over and over again. He fights with his parents, and chases his friends around town, always on the verge of missing something great. He works at the ice cream parlour and reads horror novels. Whitehead's teenage protagonist spends every summer in Sag Harbor, at the tip of New York's Long Island. They argue and mishear each other, they attempt to flirt and get massages. In Paper Losses, one of the stories in Moore's latest collection, a divorcing couple travel to an island resort with their family. This book makes the 1960s in provincial France look like the place to go. They cavort (clothed, unclothed, in this position and that) and drink and talk, clearly loth to return to their daily lives.

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salterįor some, vacations are all about sex – that is certainly the case for Salter's couple, an American man and a French woman, on the go. The setting is gorgeous – a large house with ample gardens – and the women are wonderfully prickly with each other, softening as the time passes, even as one turns out to be carrying on with another's husband. Von Arnim takes a handful of odd British ladies (one young, one old, two in the middle) to Italy for a month in the sun. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a group of friends, starting one summer at camp and stretching out over the following several decades, proving that the choices we make in our youth, however insignificant they seem at the time, set the course for the rest of our lives. I didn't realise that I was mourning the absence of the perfect summer camp novel until Meg Wolitzer's latest novel came out last year. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzerīetween the ages of seven and 14, I spent every July at sleepaway camp. Here are some of my favorite getaways in fiction – they aren't all successful, of course, but a placid, happy trip rarely makes for compelling reading.

The vacationers by emma straub