People We Meet on Vacation

The vacation is the overarching motif in the novel, featuring both as the annual Summer Trip Poppy takes with Alex, and the numerous other journeys she takes for work and with other boyfriends. While the Summer Trips take Poppy away from the life she has built in New York, connecting her with Alex and the more authentic version of herself, the ones she takes for work that make her life a permanent vacation are a distraction from the discomfort she feels when she sits still. She feels that on vacation she leaves behind the lonely girl she was in Linfield in favor of the worldly, adventurous woman she wishes to be. On vacation with Alex ten summers ago, Poppy decides, “this is what I want for the rest of my life. To see new places. To meet new people. To try new things. I don’t feel lost or out of place here” (95). While the novelty of new experiences in the moment is the vacation’s key attraction for Poppy, there is also the fact that away from home, she does not feel “lost or out of place […] there’s no Linfield to escape or long, boring classes to dread going back to” (95).