Murder Takes a Vacation

While Murder Takes a Vacation offers all the elements of a light cozy mystery, Lippman takes the opportunity to delve into more serious social issues through Mrs. Blossom’s insights about others and her growing insight into herself. Through Mrs. Blossom’s experiences, the novel explores how society’s discrimination based on weight deeply impacts her identity and sense of self-worth. 

From the opening scenes of the novel, Lippman establishes Mrs. Blossom’s awareness of others’ attitudes toward her weight. The novel begins with a ticket agent offering her an upgrade on her flight, awkwardly telling her that the seats in business class will be more “comfortable” for her. With an inner ache, Mrs. Blossom recognizes the comment as a microaggression she’s experienced time and again. Over the years, she has internalized much of the social censure she’s received, and she comments soon after the scene that she is “a large woman […] OK, fine, […] a fat woman” (4). This perception of herself has made her timid and self-effacing, an effect pointed out by fashionista Danny Johnson observes that her clothes communicate the desire for invisibility, commenting, “[Y]ou don’t want people to look at you” (60). This lifelong feeling of shame contributes to her vulnerability to flattery and manipulation: When Allan Turner latches on to her at the airport, Mrs. Blossom feels “warmed” by his faux-admiration, while the novel implies that he has singled her out for her very “invisibility” and feelings of inferiority, which make her an ideal “mule” to smuggle his stolen goods. 

As the novel continues, Lippman delves into the origins of Mrs. Blossom’s perceptions of her weight and their connection to her self-worth. Her self-consciousness about her weight began in childhood, when her “aggressively thin” mother micromanaged the food she ate to force her daughter’s body into compliance with societal notions of health and beauty. Her mother went further to imply that no one could possibly find her beautiful, saying, “Anyone who tells you that you’re pretty is just trying to butter you up, to get something out of you” (97). Mrs. Blossom still believes that her mother was always gravely disappointed in her for not being thin like herself. Though Mrs. Blossom has tried to put it behind her, this experience led to lingering guilt over her lifelong inability to lose weight and sensitivity to the topic: When Elinor, who has absorbed this bias without even realizing it, says casually that she’ll have to “diet” after their trip, Mrs. Blossom asks her, “Would it be so unbearable to have a body like mine?” (187). Because she has internalized her mother’s criticisms and abuse, the microaggressions of people like the ticket agent and Elinor sting, reinforcing the shame that her mother engendered in her. 

However, Lippman offers hope for Mrs. Blossom, whose perspective on her weight, her worth, and herself shifts over the course of the novel. On her vacation, she finds ways of navigating society’s prejudices and becoming more comfortable with her body. She also finds friends who celebrate her shape; Danny, for instance, advises her to emphasize her figure: “[Y]ou should be dressing like Elizabeth Taylor. You’re all breast from clavicle to waist. Let’s work with that” (49). Mrs. Blossom takes his advice and begins to see that her body isn’t something of which to be ashamed. She takes this new sense of her body as beautiful and powerful to a different level when, in the story’s climax, she takes advantage of her size to knock Marko overboard, saving herself and Elinor. By the end of the novel, Mrs. Blossom sees herself from a new perspective that celebrates her body, highlighting the novel’s message about both the damage that weight discrimination can do to a person’s sense of self-worth and the powerful shift that can occur when the resulting shame is banished.