Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

by Dean Bakopoulos

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156031671
• ISBN13: 9780156031677
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 14 years and up

Customer Reviews

Can they overcome their legacy?

I thought this was a haunting powerful book. I was afraid to turn the pages at the end for fear of what would happen to Mikey and his friends when they realized they were men and no longer boys with some dreams of possibilites at least ahead of them. I cheered for the mothers and worried about the young wives and new mothers. I ached for Detroit. As soon as I finished this book, I checked to see if Dean Bakopoulos had written another one. He is now on my list of authors to follow.

unique debut novel

I started out immediately liking this book and it's easy reading style. The more I read and became involved in the characters and the life of the town of Maple Rock, the more I was impressed by Dean Bakopoulos' style of writing. His writing merges great storytelling, elements of historical fiction and magic realism. As Michael Smlij turns 17 the small town where he lives sees the exit of many of the "dads", disillusioned and despairing of lost jobs and the shift away from industrial jobs, they are thought to have "gone to the moon". Some of the sons grow up to believe that just maybe there really is a place on the moon, so hard is it for them to believe that all of their fathers abandoned their families. We follow several characters as they grow older, become involved in relationships. Some get an education and change their paths while other seem destined to continue in their father's footsteps. By the end of the book I was certain that I was reading a first class, wonderfully described debut novel. I think this will be a sure hit for book clubs with lots of divergent characters to talk about and regional interest here in Wisconsin. Very well done. 5*

Please Don't Miss This Book

When Michael Smolij is 16, his father (and all the other men in his town) begin to disappear, one by one. The only clue about where they might have gone is a single note one of the men leaves, literally on his way out the door: "I'm going to the moon." Although I was captivated by the opening chapter, I was worried about where I thought the story was headed -- I figured I was reading "The Mystery of the Missing Lunar Fathers," and I had a hard time seeing how these fragile magical and metaphorical elements could support the weight of a 300-page novel. Happily, I was wrong; almost as soon as he establishes this "mystery," the author does something unexpected and (to me) borderline brilliant: He pretty much leaves it alone. The moon and the missing men are referenced only occasionally (but never forgotten) through the bulk of the novel, and yet they hang over and influence the entire narrative, much like (to clumsily appropriate the metaphor) the moon itself. Bakopoulos never beats you over the head with the story's mystical aspects, but never quite lets you forget them, either (nor should you, since they play an important role in the book's moving and equally ambiguous conclusion). This frees Bakopoulos to make this Michael's story, not his father's. The reader comes to know Michael as fundamentally thoughtful and decent, although understandably damaged by his father's seemingly incomprehensible abandonment. The story achieves its greatest poignency when Michael and his friends have children of their own, and suddenly find themselves facing many of the same issues and temptations that presumably lured their own fathers away many years before. For those who appreciate a strong sense of place, Bakopoulos manages to portray the Detroit area -- a once-proud industrial metropolis slowly growing old and tired and irrelevant in this post-industrial service economy -- so effectively that it becomes an integral character. Like any good character, its changes over the course of the story significantly impact and influence the other (flesh-and-blood) characters. Even in the face of obvious decline, Michael and his friends find virtue in remaining in a place everyone else wants to flee. It's left to the reader to decide whether those choices are due to nostalgia, or loyalty, or a sense that their fathers need them to look after their homes while they're gone. So why should you buy this book? Well, for starters, Bakopoulos writes extremely well. He creates interesting characters and places them in interesting settings and has them do interesting things. But shouldn't every published novel accomplish at least that (even if most don't)? Why did I give this book five stars? I guess because it's just ... different. I never knew what to expect from page to page, or even sentence to sentence. Even though the mood and tone remain consistent, the book swirls moments of humor, tragedy, mystery, and grace together so easily and so rapidly I could

Excellent debut

The crumbling of America's manufacturing sector is more than just a segment on the nightly business report as Dean Bakopolus records in this beautifully written and moving first novel. Narrator Michael Smolij's family is part of a close-knit blue collar Detroit suburb, where nearly all the fathers work in local factories. As these jobs vanish through downsizing and outsourcing, so do the dads also begin to disappear. One leaves a note: "Gone to the moon." The parish priest joins the exodus. The local bar starts serving the fourteen-year-olds who've had to step into their fathers' shoes. Mothers start working two or three jobs. Instead of growing into the good-paying factory positions their fathers' held, the kids take the only jobs available; working at the mall for $6 an hour. Michael's family is a little better educated than some of the neighbors and he aspires to college, taking community college classes while working in the mall bookstore. His cousin and best friend move into their twenties working at mall food court jobs meant for high school kids, trying their hands at any kind of entrepreneurial enterprise that will bring in a little money. They forge new families, but as they struggle to realize a slice of the American dream they always expected to be theirs, the sons of the vanished fathers are overcome by a strange restlessness, and Michael fears that they, too, will abandon their families, leaving their own children with even less to hope for than they had. Bakopolus infuses a touch of magic into the grit of the story with excellent effect. Where did the fathers go? No amount of detective work turns up any of them. Realizing that there was no dignified place for them in the post-industrial economy, perhaps they really did go to the moon. This is an auspicious debut from a writer who has a great deal to say and the skill to tell it well. I look forward to his next novel.

Wow.

This book grabs the reader's attention with a powerful first chapter and then slides into a captivating rhythm that carries you through to the end. The story reveals a working class life that unfolds into what we realize is *our* reality, no matter what our social class, where we live, or how solid our family structure. We follow the life of the main character, Michael, a boy whose life is displaced when his father (and in fact all the men in town) leaves. We learn about the hardship of a post-industrial, service based economy, where passions and dreams disappear in the haze of obligation, bills, and the comfort of the social networks, spaces, and places we consider "home". Mr. Bakopoulos gently, and brilliantly, conveys his ideas through his characters while commenting on the plight of men and society in a post-industrial economy, without being overtly political. This book is thoughtful, well written, funny in parts and sad - you know the sad where you get a choking pit in your throat when you read - in others. Wow. Buy this book.