Dean Bakopoulos

When his father disappears along with several other men from their blue-collar Detroit neighborhood, sixteen-year-old Michael Smolij witnesses the effects of large-scale abandonment on the community's wives and mothers and, in the years that follow, experiences along with his friends the same restlessness that carried away their fathers. A first novel. Reprint.

Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

Haylie

** spoiler alert **
           Talk about a dissatisfying ending.

The premise is cool enough: all the fathers in the town of Maple Rock somehow disappear at the same time. What's even more interesting is that they claim that they've gone to the moon. We don't hear much about what happens to them via the narrator save for some bits and pieces that seem to be directed at his father (who had gone to the moon). Instead of getting clarification about this incident that happened when Michael was a young boy and how he and his friends dealt with that situation, instead we get the lowdown of what is happening in "Miserable Mikey"'s life. I have to say that I couldn't help but feel that Michael was probably the poorest narrator ever. While his descriptions of familiar places in Michigan were great to read (I'm a Michigander; this is literally the only reason I'm giving this book two stars) it couldn't help with his character is a whole. If the author wanted to put across a character that was completely distant then I guess he checked that off his list. It's sad to say that the main character was not the interesting part of the story but rather: his best friend Nick, his ex lover from high school Sonya, his older lover Holly, and even his final flame Ella. There is a part in the book where Michael gets feedback on one of the stories that he writes for his community college creative writing class (he wanted to be a writer at one point) and the professor says something like: "flat female characters" and thus give him a poor grade on the assignment. That part I find funny since the common could almost be applied to the female characters in this book. Sonya is depicted in a slight negative light because she wants more than what Maple Rock has to offer her so now she comes off as shallow when she doesn't want to be in a relationship with Michael anymore. She only reappears when she becomes the love interest for his best friend and ends up being knocked up with his baby ultimately marrying Nick. Holly, the woman whose son died under Michael's watch as a lifeguard one summer, seems to completely get over her son's death very quickly and then falls into this predictable side relationship with Michael. While she chants about energies and chakras, Holly only seems to be relevant in the sense that she pushes Michael to start thinking about doing something with his life. Even then, he still whines about his predicament while making no effort to find a solution to his situation. When Holly runs off with this newfound freedom, Michael sits ungratefully in his inherited (for FREE) home like a lost puppy dog before he throws up his hands and gets a job at the new mall. Here, we meet Ella: a young, single mom who works at the mall with Michael and every Wednesday participates in a bikini model contest for quick cash. The banter between the two upon their first meeting was entertaining, and it seemed as though Ella would take advantage of Michael's infatuation with her so she could get a babysitter. While this happens, somehow in the midst of things Michael and Ella's son bond over pizza and the foundation of their first interaction (she finds Michael annoying) is cast aside with some faux inner struggle and then suddenly they're married with kids. It's unbelievable. 

Then the situation sounds familiar doesn't it? Suddenly, all these Maple Rock boys are men with families now and we are presented with a full circle type of plot with them possibly pulling what their father's did and disappearing to the moon. I wish that would've happened. It would've given me a little bit of satisfaction if that was the route that the author would have taken. Instead, Nick is the only one to disappear after the boys mysteriously end up meeting in the parking lot of the bar they used to frequent. After that, Tom (another friend of Michael's) has learned of his father's reappearance and death in Illinois. Tom's father is the only one of the original disappearing moon crew who we learned of their fate. Note: not our narrator's or even his best friend's father's fate.

This could have been the coolest story ever if we learned what had happened with the original crew of fathers. I really like the idea of them just suddenly floating to the moon...if I had a proper reason as to why. It would have been even cooler to see if the sons of these men were to have reunited with them on the moon and got an explanation. Not to mention, I think there's an inconsistency with what happens with men floating to the moon seeing as in the original crew they all were in Maple Rock and disappeared. Their sons were in different cities and yet were called to look at the moon in that parking lot. 

I really liked the original concept of the book and I enjoyed the way that the writing flowed. I just could not get over how the secondary characters had a chance to be more fulfilling than our main character and then they all just faded away leaving me more confused and a little agitated once I'd finished the book.

Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

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