Vacationland

August 28, 2017
Mild departures from the routine inspire neurotic palpitations in these dourly funny essays by humorist Hodgman (The Areas of My Expertise), who pegs his shaggy-dog stories to several unnerving locales. One is around his second home in rural Massachusetts, where he wrestles with anxiety about taking his garbage to the wrong town’s dump (the right dump is a longer drive), gets high and builds witchy cairns in a river, and fights a seesaw battle against raccoon droppings on his property and field mice in his kitchen. Other essays concern his postcollege arrival in New York, where he revels in sliding-scale-priced therapy with a trainee psychologist (“I could talk about jazz violin all day long and she was professionally obligated to listen thoughtfully and pretend to be interested”), and his horrifying Maine sojourns, featuring taciturn locals, insufferable summer people, and blighted confections (“Fudge is repulsive... like a dark, impacted colon blockage that a surgeon had to remove”). Recurring themes include the yearning for perpetual adolescence, the baffling burdens of adulthood (“Homeowners advice: do not put even a single box of stale Cheerios down the garbage disposal, never mind three”), and liberal self-loathing (“There is no mansplaining like white mansplaining”). Hodgman’s sketches ramble a while and then peter out, but the twists of mordant, off-kilter comedy make for entertaining excursions.

October 1, 2017

Few writers have experienced New England like comedian and author Hodgman (The Daily Show; The Areas of My Expertise), who was born in Massachusetts and now has multiple summer homes in the area. This is not a standard travelog. There are no descriptions of drives seeking fall foliage or weekends on warm, sunny beaches. Instead, there are the trials and tribulations of having accidental summer homes in Maine and Massachusetts, stories of a cancer-stricken mother, unexpected boat purchases, rebellious raccoons, graveyard wanderings, and perfectly awkward beards. Readers will be laughing out loud or reaching for their computer to verify his other observations. Many will find themselves nodding sagely at the author's accounts and cringing at mistakes they themselves have made. Hodgman's Massachusetts and Maine are uncomfortable, mildly ridiculous, and honestly sentimental in turns, as is, seemingly, the author. VERDICT Though lacking a real sense of closure, this comedic spin across life in the Northeast will be enjoyable for those who relish the travel disasters of others or comedic nonfiction.--Sara Miller Rohan, Archive Librarian, Atlanta

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.