Please Don't Come Back From The Moon: A Novel - Softcover

Bakopoulos, Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156031671 ISBN 13: 9780156031677

Publisher: Ecco, 2006

Synopsis

The summer Michael Smolij turns sixteen, his father disappears. One by one other men also vanish from the blue-collar neighborhood outside Detroit where their fathers before them had lived, raised families, and, in a more promising era, worked. One man props open the door to his shoe store and leaves a note. "I'm going to the moon," it reads. "I took the cash."

The wives drink, brawl, and sleep around, gradually settling down to make new lives and shaking off the belief in an American dream that, like their husbands, has proven to be a thing of the past. Unable to leave the neighborhood their fathers abandoned, Michael and his friends stumble through their twenties until the restlessness of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them away.

This is a haunting, unforgettable novel for anyone who has ever been left longing.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"By deftly welding magic realism with social satire, Bakopoulos captures the dark side of the working-class dream."--The New York Times Book Review

The year Michael Smolij turns seventeen, the men vanish from the blue-collar neighborhood outside Detroit where their fathers before them lived, raised families, and, in a more promising era, worked. One man props open the door to his shoe store and leaves a note. "I'm going to the moon," it reads. "I took the cash." Unable to leave the neighborhood where they have been abandoned, Michael and his friends stumble through their twenties, until the restlessness of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them away.

"Please Don't Come Back From the Moon is a terrific novel--deeply original, smart, funny and heartbreaking . . . It's a story for all of us--sons and wives and daughters, too, of the missing, the disappeared, the men on the moon."--Buffalo News

"A graceful debut . . . Something about [Michael's] earnestness and the hopelessness of it nearly broke my heart."--Marta Salij, Detroit Free Press

Dean Bakopoulos, a former bookseller, has published fiction in Zoetrope and other journals and was named one of America's best new fiction writers by Virginia Quarterly in 2004. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

About the Author

Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novel Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, a New York Times Notable Book, and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is on the faculty of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and is writer-in-residence at Grinnell College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0156031671
• ISBN 13: 9780156031677
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288