Summerlong

by Dean Bakopoulos

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 that 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 what they'd predicted.

One night Don, a father of two, leaves his house for an evening stroll, only to wake up the next morning stoned and lying in a hammock next to a young woman he barely knows. Meanwhile, his wife, Claire, leaves the house 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 incite 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.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Adult Fiction, Marriage, Audiobook

352 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2015

About the author

Dean Bakopoulos was born in Dearborn Heights, Michigan on July 6, 1975 to a Ukrainian mother and a Greek father. A child of immigrants, he grew up speaking both Ukrainian and English, was shy to the point of psychosis, and avoided group gatherings and rarely left his mother's side. He ate copious amounts of borscht and cabbage rolls. When his grandfather, Gregory Smolij, retired from 25 years on the line at Ford Rouge, there was a large party in his grandparents' basement. This is Dean's first memory and, in it, his family was brilliantly happy and jubilant. He memorized the 1981 NFL records book and recited football stats to all willing ears. When Chuck Long made his first start for the Detroit Lions, he was allowed to stay up and watch Monday Night Football. He wrote his first short story at age seven. It was called "I Get Trapped."

At puberty, he suddenly became very outgoing. Nobody could shut him up. He was either maniacally optimistic or indefatigably sullen in his demeanor; he wept far too often for a young man. A wimp! A sensitive little wimp! During high school, he recalls only one broken heart (she knows who she is), two fistfights, and an embarrassingly earnest desire to drink enough to be the next Hemingway. He went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and, while in school, worked as a writer for WWJ News Radio in Detroit. After graduating in 1997, he got married, moved to Wisconsin, worked on a horse farm for a spell (the best job he ever had), and then became the buyer for Canterbury Booksellers, which once was a bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin but is no longer one.

Later, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin MFA program, was a Tennessee Williams scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and finished his first novel, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (Harcourt), which has just been released. After a year of steady training at a place called the Monkey Bar, he was able to do a surprisingly high number of push-ups and chin-ups. In 2004, the Virginia Quarterly Review included him in an issue announcing Fiction's New Luminaries. This made him happy for months. You would not guess it, but a very famous American poet once called him (in all seriousness) a "youthful, effervescent dancer" after a gathering at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference. This has made him happy for years. When he does not get enough sleep, he is not worth knowing or being near. He lives in Mineral Point, Wisconsin with his family.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

. . . Claire, standing in the kitchen, calmly, eerily calm, actually, says, "Do we need to have a conversation about divorce?"

"Not really," Don says, "we can't afford a divorce."

Two couples - one long-married, and coming apart at the seams, the other - are they a couple, or just friends-with-benefits? - spend a languid, steamy summer engaged in a "change partners" dance involving temptation, alcohol, and plenty of weed. Oh, and someone owns a gun . . .

Bakopoulos spins an enticing dew-covered web of lies and deceit, studded with the corpses of regret, and chances never taken. The man can write. Without his frequent dashes of humor, and insights into the characters' actions, this could have been cheap soap-opera. His situations are dark, but never gloomy. And, his dialogue is tangy, and pointed. There were tons of lines I loved, and I'm posting them here just so I'll remember them:

- "Swimming naked with a man, alone, in midsummer," Ruth says, her voice lowering, "is perhaps the greatest pleasure of adult life."

- "Why is she so fucking complicated? I know two men in this town and they're both very wrapped up in her complexity."

- "Most marriages are never saved, Don Lowry. Most marriages are just kept afloat."

- "Why do older guys always do that? Make some obscure movie reference and then act all shocked because a woman fifteen years younger doesn't get the reference? Is that supposed to be flirting?"

Even though I'm a nosy person, I'm normally not the type to gawk at a car wreck, but I honestly couldn't turn away from this one.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every time I think about this novel I come back and rate it one star lower.

[Joy Findlay jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't believe this has gotten so many great reviews! I am reading it for my book club and we all gave it 2 thumbs down. I live in Grinnell, Iowa and live 2 blocks from Grinnell College, that was the only aspect of this book that I enjoyed. I personally didn't like his writing style, for me, it read like a screenplay more than a book. There wasn't much depth to any of his characters (except for Ruth), they all liked weed, fucking and whining, and with that you kinda of begin to hate them all towards the end of the book.

[Sarah at Sarah's Bookshelves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summerlong was a surprise hit for me…it’s darker and edgier than the cover would lead you to believe and is going on my 2015 Summer Reading List.

You can really feel this book…the simmering suburban discontent, everyone having an itch that’s just waiting to be scratched, the restlessness that comes with sweltering summer days. It’s like a sea of smoldering embers threatening to ignite at the slightest catalyst.

To continue reading, please visit my blog: http://www.sarahsbookshelves.com/fict...

[Anja · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the couple in this book was realistically written...even though they were flawed and did problematic things, the husband and wife were both relatable and likeable. I was really invested in both their storylines. Bad towards the end, this book sadly started to switch the focus too much towards the side characters. In my opinion I would've preferred the narrative to stick with the voices of the couple only.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just another entry in the overcrowded genre of suburban angst. I found this one pretty boring and filled with unlikeable characters. A dark atmosphere pervades much of the story. Rather depressing overall.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up on the word "hilarious" in the description of the book, but I didn't find anything in it to be hilarious. "Depressing from start to finish" would be a much better description.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

One novel you might tuck in your bag for poolside diversion is “Summerlong,” a sexy but surprisingly poignant new novel by Dean Bakopoulos. This is a story for adults about adults gone wild. Bakopoulos, who teaches at Grinnell College, sets his tale in that Iowa town in the summer of 2012. As the temperature rises, Don and his wife, Claire, are failing and flailing. “Summerlong” contains such revealing depictions of the unequal duties of fathers and mothers that you’ll want to laugh or weep, depending, I suppose, on whether you’re a father or a mother.

Claire is a writer who hasn’t written anything since the couple’s young children were born, but nothing else gives her pleasure anymore. “This,” Claire thinks, “is the curse of her life: everyone around her demanding reassurance, as if there is a bottomless well of it, as if there is nothing that scares or overwhelms her, as if she is a source of endless cuddles, backrubs, and soothing tones.”

Don, meanwhile, is doing. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

[Tina Humphrey Boogren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, this book. How do I describe it? It's devastating. And hilarious. It's dark. And beautiful. And it takes place in Iowa. Read it. Soon.

I re-read this for book club this month and I still loved it and underlined even more this time around. The wit, drama, lust, and tragedy of a Shakespearean tale set in my home state with characters around my own age facing similar mid-life questions.

And Ruth. I love Ruth.

[Cher 'N Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars - It was good.

What a quirky little novel. The tone put me in mind of Little Children, though I preferred the writing of the latter.

The book starts with a couple of chapters that dump the reader into the strange characters instead of easing them in and will be a turn off for some. If you give it at least 10-15 chapters (they are very short), you will have a better idea of whether or not you will become engaged in the story.
-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: We’re all terrible people. Eventually, we all become terrible, maybe around the middle of our lives, and then, if we’re lucky, we have time to find a way to be good again.

First Sentence: In the hay gold dusk of late spring, Don Lowry takes his usual walk through town and out to the fields beyond it.

[Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last week, we had to put my thirteen-year-old dog Batman to sleep. The poor guy was the toughest, most resilient little chihuahua you could ever meet, but his blindness, deafness, general confusion over the world and his place in it, and overall lethargy mixed with anger, made his passing inevitable.

So since we saw it coming, the past year or so has been one of my more philosophical. We all have to go sometime, but we don't always realize deep down inside just how transitory everything is; for me, it took the physical decline of a five-pound dog to really get it. Batman was a metaphor for my own mortality, a reminder that there are some things that just can't be avoided. Our consumer culture and ten-minute attention span concerning world and national news might appeal to different sentimentalities, but it's the job of literature to shine a light on the inevitable and (on a good day) plant some seeds as to how these inevitabilities might be dealt with.
inevitable.

It was with just this spirit that I picked up Summerlong and read it cover to cover within the space of my first Batman-less weekend. The novel takes place over a hot Iowa summer in a small town that's host to a liberal arts college. Realtor Don Lowry, fallen on hard times after an attempted house-flipping career, finds his job and marriage threatened by the Great Recession and his own shortcomings. His wife Claire, a novelist and former academic, can still turn heads at the swimming pool but is increasingly coming to view her own life as "wasted." Amelia (nicknamed ABC), a young woman mourning the loss of her one true love, returns to town to die, and winds up linked to Don (though not for the reason you might think). Charlie, the son of a local academic, returns home to tidy his father's estate and winds up linked to Claire (for a few reasons, the most obvious of which is just what you'd think).
inevitable.

The drama develops beautifully: Charlie and Claire cross paths when she bums a cigarette and beer off him outside a local convenience store; Don and ABC cross paths when he finds her lying outside, believing her dead, while she remembers his name from a private joke between her and her now-deceased lover. Deciding that he's now a link to this lover from beyond the grave, the two of them engage in a summer-long routine of getting high together, all in the proximity of an older woman ABC is caring for, Ruth, who riffs on spiritual matters between tokes off one of ABC's many joints. All of it goes somewhere, but even if it didn't, just eavesdropping on all of this is pleasure enough.
inevitable.

Throughout the summer, there are plenty of revelations and struggles for all characters, young and old. It's the middle aged ones who seem to speak the most convincingly in the novel, though, perhaps because, when contrasted with ABC and Charlie and the lives they have ahead of them, our sympathies are more with those who are coming to realize how many choices they've made over the years without realizing it. This realization, like in real life, comes with a share of bad decisions, and drugs are barely the tip of the iceberg. Summerlong makes scant mention of the perspective the Lowrys' children have but I found myself grinning in squeamish, reluctant understanding at the middle aged angst the Lowrys are carrying around. Sucking in guts at pool parties, recalling past opportunities gone by, putting on rose-colored glasses with which to look back at college days--all of these are the sins of the approaching-40s, particularly in middle- to upper-class white America, and if we thought when we were young we'd be exempt from all of it, well...you know.

"No one can waste a life," Claire realizes later in the book; "All you can do is live it day by day." The summer, the novel, is a microcosm of struggle, consequence and revelation, and while I wouldn't call its conclusion happy or feel-good, it does contain its own brand of wisdom and perspective.

[Gayle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full review at: http://everydayiwritethebookblog.com/...

Summerlong is about an odd love square (is that a thing?) that forms one hot summer in Grinnell, Iowa. Claire and Don are married, in their late 30s, and at a precipice in their marriage. Don, a realtor, has hidden their dire financial situation from his wife, and the two now face foreclosure on their house and an inevitable bankruptcy filing. Meanwhile, Charlie, an underemployed actor in his late 20s, is back in town to go through his father’s papers and prepare his house for sale after his father is moved to a nursing home with dementia. And ABC, a recent Grinnell graduate, has returned to her college town after the death of her best friend/lover, mired in grief.

One night, these characters interact in an unexpected way: Don comes across ABC lying in the grass, smoking pot, and joins her for an intimate but chaste evening of sleeping next to each other and getting stoned. Claire goes for a midnight run and meets Charlie in the parking lot of a convenience store, where they share an instant attraction. Over the course of the next 3 months, the characters couple off in a variety of combinations, sometimes consummating their attractions and sometimes not. Don and Claire’s marriage deteriorates until they decide to separate, while ABC floats along in her grief and depression and Charlie tries, unsuccessfully, to find his father’s missing manuscript and redeem his academic reputation.

I really didn’t like Summerlong. I did appreciate some of the insights into marital harmony and middle age that Bakopoulos infused into Claire and Don’s relationship. But I found the other relationships unrealistic and strange, and I had a really hard time with most of the dialogue in the book. I don’t think people talk to each other in real life like they do in Summerlong. Claire and Don were blunt and sharp to the point of meanness – do most married people act like that to each other?

Lots of drugs, lots of sex. I don’t have a problem with that, but they became a crutch for the author. These characters didn’t have much to say to each other or a genuine attraction, so he just had them get stoned and hook up. Problem solved! There are also too many unlikely coincidences.

There’s a feisty old grandmother type who says it like it is and eventually saves some of these doomed characters. Meh.

Didn’t these characters have ANYONE else to hang out with other than the other three?
Don and Claire’s kids – didn’t THEY find the whole setup kind of weird?
Why is Claire so angry all the time? And why hasn’t she worked for the last 10 years? For a feminist New Yorker, she sure depends on her man to make everything better.

These questions plagued me as I read Summerlong. I just didn’t get it. I know I am in the minority on this one – people seem to love this book. It just made me angry.

[Regina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because of its Grinnell, Iowa setting and origins. I got many chuckles out of references to the town and its neighbor, Des Moines, and I was engaged in the story of mid-life marital angst. There's not much to root for here though, and therefore nothing to celebrate at its conclusion.

[Tara - runningnreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fact that this narrative reminds of something I've read in the past, and really enjoyed, yet cannot remember is driving me crazy; nevertheless, this was a great read! I was already sold, based on the marketing description, and I’m so thankful that it did not disappoint. Here’s a passage that I just have to share; Claire, one of the main characters, is at the community swimming pool with her kids:

"Claire focuses on the many middle-aged women, mostly mothers, around her, also wearing bikinis, but none of them, as beautiful as some of them were, suggested that kind of pending eruption she sees in the half-naked young people around her. No, Claire and her almost-forty contemporaries stand about suggesting the virtues of endurance. They had made it to middle age with a remnant of hotness, and despite the attendant sagging and indignities of aging, they managed to transcend the reality that a tattoo above the ass or behind the shoulder had been a bad idea. Yes, many of the women, Claire included, have approached forty with a verve and vigor, had Pilated and power-walked themselves into a kind of level of fitness that they had not seen since sixteen, and when they went to the pool, the self-loathing they’d been taught to feel as teenagers had been replaced by a sexy confidence."

Isn't this great? I can't even do it justice. I feel like the author has imbued this entire novel with a sarcastic, yet awfully true, and humorous portrayal of life in the ‘burbs; these characters long for something different, but they seem trapped in the only reality with which they are familiar. I think the writing is fantastic, and I highly recommend this one.

[Tamara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard a review on NPR and thought this sounded intriguing. I expected an exploration of some dark characters, and have often enjoyed that sort of read. What I found was a book that felt like it was written to be a movie, a bunch of “middle-aged,” dissatisfied navel-gazers and loads implausible coincidences. The characters weren’t dark and complex, they were shallow, unlikeable and insincere. Plus, it seemed like one of those books where you think the author may fancy himself as one (or possibly two) of the main characters.

Full disclosure, I spent too much time with these characters while in a hospital waiting room today, and probably needed a break. Normally, I’d take more breaks when reading and not become so sick of slightly annoying characters in a book. Instead, I feel like I spent a year with a horrible roommate and just need to get away from some tedious habits.

I did find two quotes worth contemplating:
“Midlife is when you have to accept what you’ve created, knowing that the life you have is the only one you will live. And that can be terrifying, until you accept it, and then you’re free of terror.”

“We’re all terrible people…Eventually, we all become terrible, maybe around the middle of our lives, and then, if we’re lucky, we have time to find a way to be good again.”

These sort of sum up the themes of the book, and are worth reflection, but I don’t really agree with them. Life is messy and beautiful, at any stage, and a person may adjust their course at any time and many times

[William Koon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Summerlong (sic)

The old lady who is smoking dope with the lesbian whose lover has died , is just making up the stuff about fireflies and the spiritual life and the real estate agent. She just wants to commit suicide 300 pages later. Bakopoulos also uses the gun he shows in act I, but he takes his time and stretches the plot so thin you can see right through it. In fact there is no plot. No action either. No character development as well. But you do have the following: Ironic comments on academia, references to Lindsay Lohan (2), a middle aged woman failed writer finding herself, homosexuals with children, and a critique of small town America.

He uses the passive voice as in the following passage when the old demented professor kills himself: “He puts the gun in his mouth and the trigger gets pulled.”

And amidst the sloppy sentences you have “Reader, she blows him.” And this jewel: “she smiles but doesn’t smile.”

He. Also. Uses. Periods. For. Emphasis. OMG!!!!!

Towards the book's slimy finish, he describes a party: “A stupid, shallow party of middle-aged professors and their ilk milling about in a wine-soaked haze of sexual innuendo and intellectual pretension.” That's a fair description of the novel itself, one of the worst I have read in years.

[Marcy Dermansky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, this book made me want to live in Iowa and go to Grinnell. Because I wanted to go to be able to go to meet ABC and Charlie Gulliver and have all of these incredible coincidences among smart people. Bakopoulus has a way of ending some of chapters of this novel with this kind of insane perfection -- sentence level, emotional level -- that made me happy to be a person reading a book.

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay so I really loved this book, like a lot. It was well-written and super-sexy and I really don't even need much else when it comes to novels but it's also abt marriage and families and regret and sadness and life and and and. I really loved it and was stoked anytime I got a chance to dig back in and haven't felt that way abt a book in a long time. CALLING IT NOW: this here book is one of my favorite reads of 2016 and we ain't even got halfway thru January yet. Calling. It. (I marked it up so much w/my little reading stars!)

[Sylvia Wojslaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay this was interesting - I liked how real it was and appreciated the unromanticized show of marriage/middle-age, but it was definitely ~different~. I actually really enjoyed it though, I recommend if you’re looking for a change of pace

[Wendy K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+ for the story, 5 for the writing & the abundance of quotes about motherhood/family that were pretty dead-on ("This, she has begun to believe, is the curse of her life: everyone around her demanding reassurance, as if there is a bottomless well of it, as if there is nothing that scares or overwhelms her, as if she is a source of endless cuddles, back rubs, and soothing tones.")
Unfortunately the NPR book review ("it will kill you..." "It will break you.") might have raised my expectations too high. The book was entertaining & slightly humorous, but I didn't find it to be the gut-wrenching intimate account of middle age that it's being hailed as.
Also, did anyone else find it strange that their children, born in the late 90s, have 1970s names? And what kind of nickname is "ABC"? These little things bothered me ... And little things don't usually bother me.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars...

[Scott Semegran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summerlong is the latest book by Dean Bakopoulos, a humorous yet thoughtful and dreamlike novel about the disintegration of a marriage intertwined with other folks in a small college town. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “A deft and hilarious exploration of the simmering tensions beneath the surface of a contented marriage that 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 what they'd predicted. 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.”

In addition to Claire and Don, we are also introduced to a wayward actor named Charlie who seduces Claire, a decrepit and stoned matriarch named Ruth, her beautiful yet suicidal caretaker named ABC who befriends Don, and the actor’s philandering father Gil—now an invalid in a nursing home. Don tries to mend his marriage. Claire tries to run from Don. Charlie and ABC willfully get entangled in their marriage. Gil’s narcissistic façade is uncovered, and Ruth gleefully watches everyone while getting stoned yet has a morbid plan of her own. From a high level, this all seems like first-world problems or the drama of the well to-do in the Midwest, where the people who fear bankruptcy or foreclosure suddenly receive a free house or a check for $25,000. But Bakopoulos masterfully weaves a hypnotizing story with pathos and thought-provoking insight into the struggles of a couple bound within stupefying routine and the doldrums dished out slowly over time.

There are pointed insights about parenting like this realization from Claire:

“This, she has begun to believe, is the curse of her life: everyone around her demanding reassurance, as if there is a bottomless well of it, as if there is nothing that scares or overwhelms her, as if she is a source of endless cuddles, back rubs, and soothing tones.”

Then thought-provoking ruminations about one’s life and the things we leave behind:

“Do we all have secrets and do we all leave evidence behind of such secrets when our end comes without notice? What would Charlie want burned if he were to become incapacitated someday? Maybe that is the sign of a good, ethical life? The idea that there is nothing you need to burn before you die.”

I was mesmerized by this story, even when some of the characters steered into eye-rolling, selfish territory. I wanted to know what happened next to all of them and was transfixed until the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 4 and 1/2 stars.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In small-town Iowa, a middle-aged couple and two younger people form a love quadrangle, sort of. The marriage is falling apart, the younger woman is having an existential crisis after losing her girlfriend, and the younger man is dealing with his father's dementia. That's the basic story.

I didn't really connect with the characters. I thought Claire (the wife) was annoying. Okay, you're tired of your role as wife and mother. Maybe discuss that with your husband instead of expecting him to read your mind and getting upset when he doesn't. A lot of this novel would never have happened if they'd just communicate.

I enjoyed the writing for the most part, with a few instances of wondering why the author made a particular choice.

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

During a long, hot summer in the college town of Grinnell, Iowa, an actor comes home to prep his parents' house for sale; an aging woman and her young caregiver each plot a death on their own terms; and Claire and Don Lowry face down a midlife rupture in their marriage. All of their lives will become entangled in surprising ways, amid a haze of heat, booze, pot smoke, and rampant sexual energy.

This was nothing earth-shattering--just solid, entertaining reading from start to finish. I liked all the characters and found them thoroughly believable. Claire's and Don's midlife angst probably had some extra resonance for me, because I'm right there with them. I also liked where the story lands. For a book that's largely about grief, lost love, and aging, Summerlong gets pretty suspenseful in the final pages.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description contains the words “Incredibly funny”, something I didn’t experience. I did find a compelling, at times mildly amusing, emotional story involving some realistic human experiences and the courage to attempt the examination of passive suicidal ideation. As someone who constantly “feels” to an often uncomfortable level, I found this story very well done. I would have given it 5 stars except for one aspect of the ending which, for me, didn’t ring true.

[Karolyn Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMERLONG, by Dean Bakopoulos, is a great read. The story is poignant and weighty, but Bakopoulos has written it in a way that keeps it from being downright sad or depressing. It felt a bit like a Shakespearean comedy in that the characters are so active we almost forget their world is imploding.

Summerlong is the story of Don and Claire Lowry who live in Grinnell, Iowa (which happens to be just an hour down the road from me). Don Lowry is a realtor who has lost everything due to the Great Recession. Claire is a novelist—or rather, she wrote one novel ten years ago. In other words, both of them have hit rock bottom, and now their marriage is crumbling. One day Don Lowry (as he's called throughout the book) stumbles upon a young girl called ABC who has also hit rock bottom. Her lover died, and now she wants to die. That same night, Claire meets Charlie, a guy who has returned to this tiny Midwestern town to clear out his father's office. (Yes, Charlie, a failed actor, has hit rock bottom, too.) So Don Lowry and ABC start "a thing," and Claire and Charlie start a thing. Oh, and Charlie and ABC start a thing. (read: varying levels of flirtation --> hooking up). They all smoke weed, and drink, and wander through the night, and skinny dip, and ... You get the picture. They're busy!

What I liked best about this book is that the main characters seem real; they are really hurting, and they're finding ways to ease their pain. Anyone who's been through a bad breakup will relate. (Some of the minor characters seem less realistic.) We keep turning the pages because Bakopoulos gives us hope that Claire and Don might reconcile. Do they? Read the book to find out!

Four Hot Hot Stars

P.S. Did I mention there was a lot of sex?!

[Kathie Giorgio · Rating 4 out of 5]

So you know those television shows where a number of characters are running in and out of doors and across hallways, trying to find each other, but never quite being in the same doorway at the same time?

That's exactly what this book is like.

Throughout Summerlong, and throughout a long summer, all of the characters are running by each other, next to each other, away from each other, and the reader is holding his or her breath, waiting for the calamity when they finally all end up in the same place at the same time.

At times gut-wrenchingly funny, at other times heart-wrenchingly sad, Summerlong shows relationships at their best and worst. The characters are clearly written and strong, the tension persistent throughout, and the setting itself becomes as three-dimensional as the characters. You begin to believe that this story could not happen anyplace else but in Iowa.

I truly only had one complaint. One character, ABC, as much as I liked her, never felt completely believable to me. Throughout the novel, she believes that her dead lover is going to find her and bring her to the spirit world. But I'm never convinced fully of that belief. I don't see enough motivation in ABC to believe it - there's no hovering over tarot cards, for example, no burning of candles, nothing at all to show a belief in life after death or the ability to come back from "the spirit world" and transport someone back with you.

But...it was only enough to make me quirk an eyebrow and then barrel on to the next page. This is a rolling great read. Once you begin to read it, don't plan on doing anything else until the final page. You just won't want to miss the ending.

[Andrew Horton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Bakopoulos's "Please don't come back from the moon." As much as "Summerlong" is trying SO hard to be a modern Yates/Cheever/Updike/etc. Big Serious damning indictment of the modern marriage and wasted potential in middle age and beta malehood and all that, all of the characters are mere ciphers, acting like people don't, uttering forced dialogue, and generally being hilarious. This is sub-"American Beauty" posturing and straining, effortful try-hardery that would read like a hilarious pastiche of those types of novels if it wasn't so po-faced. There's so much potential there in the collapsing fin de siecle of middle American culture, but it's squandered again and again. The narrative is a sloppy mess, too - even little details like times of day and basic characterization are so inconsistent that the book literally feels unedited. I could write a laundry list of odd/inexplicable plot holes, characterization mishaps, and even straight-up continuity errors that occur on every other page. This one's a turkey!

[Lisa Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story follows a couple and the demise of their marriage. It is honest and open as the they are with each other, more open than most couples are with each other. Others are involved and they are interesting characters too. Somehow the kids are missing from this novel as only a man could write kids out of the story. If the kids activities and needs had been addressed more, I would have given it four stars because I liked it a lot.

[Jafar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Married, suburban, middle-aged ennui, and not particularly well-done. The author has taken the easy and clichéd route of putting a New York girl in a small town in Iowa to provide some justification for the angst and boredom without being able to fully get into his characters’ minds.