Summerlong - Couverture souple

Summerlong is the Great White Midlife Crisis novel that Jonathan Franzen has tried to write (and failed) and Jonathan Lethem has tried to write (and failed) and Michael Chabon (wisely) half-avoided ever trying to write. But Dean Bakopoulos pulls it off (NPR.org)

For a novel steeped in marital atrophy and midlife ennui, Summerlong offers plenty of humor in unexpected moments (New York Times)

A witty read about likeable people behaving badly (People magazine)

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)

[A] sexy but surprisingly poignant new novel...Bakopoulos's greatest talent is his ability to mix ribald comedy with heartfelt sorrow (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

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)

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)

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)

All the threads Bakopoulos has been expertly weaving suddenly begin to connect, and suddenly everything fits in a way that is as dazzling as the firefires that dot the shore, bringing a sense of absolute wonder and even a kind of hope (San Francisco Chronicle)

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.