Summerlong - Tapa dura

Dean Bakopoulos is a great talent--everything he writes is full of insight and inspiration and the best kind of divine comedy.--Lorrie Moore

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

"Bakopoulos is very much his own writer, and it is his distinct humanity and sense of humor that make this story so emotionally rewarding. This is that rare, contemporary suburban novel with characters the reader can actually embrace in spite of their many flaws."--Publishers Weekly

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

"A witty read about likeable people behaving badly."--People

" 'Compared to the moody and fierce North Atlantic, the vista of the icy blue lake seems to make your heart swell rather than tremble, ' thinks ABC when she sees it. The novel's ending, sort of surprisingly, provokes the same reaction."--Newsday

"Beyond the muggy weather, Bakopoulos, writer-in-residence at Grinnell College, conjures the milky mood of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream, ' with pot and booze substituting for fairy dust and lovers entwined with the wrong person... Lord, what fools these mortals be! And what fun to see them in action."--Seattle Times

"A sharply observed and smartly written book... captures the that instant of perfect equilibrium, where everything is exactly right - when love and family and career have come into exquisite balance. And then the instant after when everything you thought you've built just falls to pieces."--NPR, Best Books of 2015

"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

"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