Summerlong: A Novel - Hardcover

Bakopoulos, Dean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062321161 ISBN 13: 9780062321169

Publisher: Ecco, 2015

Synopsis

The author of Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon and My American Unhappiness delivers his breakout novel: a deft and hilarious exploration of the simmering tensions beneath the surface of a contented marriage which explode in the bedrooms and backyards of a small town over the course of a long, hot summer.

In the sweltering heat of one summer in a small Midwestern town, Claire and Don Lowry discover that married life isn’t quite as they’d predicted.

One night Don, a father of three, leaves his house for an evening stroll, only to wake up the next morning stoned, and sleeping in a hammock next to a young woman he barely knows. His wife, Claire, leaves the house on this same night to go on a midnight run—only to find herself bumming cigarettes and beer outside the all-night convenience store.

As the summer lingers and the temperature rises, this quotidian town’s adults grow wilder and more reckless while their children grow increasingly confused. Claire, Don, and their neighbors and friends find themselves on an existential odyssey, exploring the most puzzling quandaries of marriage and maturity. When does a fantasy become infidelity? When does compromise become resentment? When does routine become boring monotony? Can Claire and Don survive everything that befalls them in this one summer, forgive their mistakes, and begin again?

Award-winning writer Dean Bakopoulos delivers a brutally honest and incredibly funny novel about the strange and tenuous ties that bind us, and the strange and unlikely places we find connection. Full of mirth, melancholy, and redemption, Summerlong explores what happens when life goes awry.

About this title

About the Author:

Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Please Don't Come Back from the Moon and My American Unhappiness. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is the winner of a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is the writer-in-residence at Grinnell College, and lives in Iowa.

Review:

Dean Bakopoulos is a great talent--everything he writes is full of insight and inspiration and the best kind of divine comedy. (Lorrie Moore)

Summerlong is Dean Bakopoulos at his finest: daringly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and forever on the watch for redemption. This is a book for any season, any reader, anywhere--it shimmers with magic, lust, and love. (Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs)

There is no better guide through a hot summer in the heartland than Dean Bakopoulos...Lovers chasing all over the joint, the glorious wreckage, and Bakopoulos with his keen eye, his sympathy and his wit, there to see all. (Jane Hamilton)

“Tennessee Williams has nothing on Bakopoulos when it comes to marital and moral dissipation... Into this emotional abyss Bakopoulos injects a high degree of coy humor and wry self-deprecation to deliver a heartbreaking and wise ... A sure hit with fans of the three Jonathans: Dee, Franzen, and Tropper.” (Booklist (starred review))

“Provocative, sultry... the novel stays light on its feet; its breezy chapters are laced with sex and humor... between the louche vibe and matriarchal presence, the novel often feels like Armistead Maupin’s San Francisco teleported to the Midwest.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Bakopoulos is very much his own writer, and it is his distinct humanity and sense of humor that make this story so emotionally rewarding. This is that rare, contemporary suburban novel with characters the reader can actually embrace in spite of their many flaws.” (Publishers Weekly)

“A witty read about likeable people behaving badly.” (People)

“A couple in a crumbling marriage find themselves entwined with two lost 20-somethings during a hot, sticky Iowan summer... Dean Bakopoulos, who lives in Iowa himself, crafts a surprisingly steamy Midwestern landscape and a set of characters who will do anything to stay afloat as their lives fall apart.” (Esquire)

“Summer gets weird in a Midwestern town when married couples start behaving recklessly-as if, my God, they’re not married at all! Bakopoulos... uses the adults’ bizarre behavior to examine ideas about marriage, happiness and that oh-so-slim line between fantasy and infidelity.” (Miami Herald)

“A dishy warm-weather read... Bakopoulos draws readers into the intimate life of married couple Claire and Don Lowry as they wrestle with parenting, failed ambitions and the search for middle-aged happiness. There’s sex, drugs and more sex in this steamy summer tale, with an intensely emotional undercurrent.” (Wisconsin State Journal)

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062321161
• ISBN 13: 9780062321169
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368