PLEASE DON’T COME BACK FROM THE MOON

Name: PLEASE DON’T COME BACK FROM THE MOON
Author: Dean Bakopoulos
ISBN: 0-15-101135-4

by Dean Bakopoulos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2005

Bakopoulos doesn’t make a single wrong move, seamlessly integrating the magic-realism elements into the rest. A dazzling...

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Where have all the fathers gone?

That’s the question in this marvelous first novel. It’s 1991 in Maple Rock, a white ethnic Catholic suburb of Detroit. Narrator Michael Smolij is 16 when his uncle disappears, and then his father, an unemployed draftsman. A shoe-store owner leaves a note: “I’m going to the moon.” A few dozen more family men leave, never to return. Michael’s cousin Nick thinks they may be hiding out in an old hunting cabin, but the cabin’s empty, and it becomes an article of faith among the no-nonsense teenagers that their fathers have gone to the moon, a change of address as real as beer or pizza. Overnight, the boys become men, taking after-school jobs, throwing back vodka shots, having sex like there’s no tomorrow. In actuality, they are consumed by grief and rage. Michael’s kid brother, Kolya, acts up in school and is put on Ritalin; “Miserable Mikey” struggles with depression. The story sees these ultimate deadbeat dads through a scrim of magic and superstition, their disappearance signaling that life is a series of trapdoors, that there’s no permanence, neither in jobs nor in dads. Michael slowly makes a life for himself, getting a job at the new mall along with his buddies and falling in love with a sexy coworker who’s a single parent, victim of another deadbeat dad. Yet for every gain, there’s a loss: his mother remarries, happily, but leaves their decaying neighborhood; Nick starts his own family but loses his daredevil fire; Kolya develops into a promising athlete but enlists after 9/11. In an eerie reprise of the moon exodus 12 years before, the sons, now fathers themselves, gather spontaneously at their old rendezvous, unsure of their own loyalties.

Bakopoulos doesn’t make a single wrong move, seamlessly integrating the magic-realism elements into the rest. A dazzling debut that’s both earthy and anguished as hope battles despair, with heartbreak always just below the surface.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-15-101135-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMERLONG
by Dean Bakopoulos

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MY AMERICAN UNHAPPINESS
by Dean Bakopoulos

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

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by Harper Lee

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.