Summerlong by Dean Bakopoulos

Summerlong is the latest book by Dean Bakopoulos, a humorous yet thoughtful and dreamlike novel about the disintegration of a marriage intertwined with other folks in a small college town. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “A deft and hilarious exploration of the simmering tensions beneath the surface of a contented marriage that 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 what they'd predicted. 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.”

In addition to Claire and Don, we are also introduced to a wayward actor named Charlie who seduces Claire, a decrepit and stoned matriarch named Ruth, her beautiful yet suicidal caretaker named ABC who befriends Don, and the actor’s philandering father Gil—now an invalid in a nursing home. Don tries to mend his marriage. Claire tries to run from Don. Charlie and ABC willfully get entangled in their marriage. Gil’s narcissistic façade is uncovered, and Ruth gleefully watches everyone while getting stoned yet has a morbid plan of her own. From a high level, this all seems like first-world problems or the drama of the well to-do in the Midwest, where the people who fear bankruptcy or foreclosure suddenly receive a free house or a check for $25,000. But Bakopoulos masterfully weaves a hypnotizing story with pathos and thought-provoking insight into the struggles of a couple bound within stupefying routine and the doldrums dished out slowly over time.

There are pointed insights about parenting like this realization from Claire:

“This, she has begun to believe, is the curse of her life: everyone around her demanding reassurance, as if there is a bottomless well of it, as if there is nothing that scares or overwhelms her, as if she is a source of endless cuddles, back rubs, and soothing tones.”

Then thought-provoking ruminations about one’s life and the things we leave behind:

“Do we all have secrets and do we all leave evidence behind of such secrets when our end comes without notice? What would Charlie want burned if he were to become incapacitated someday? Maybe that is the sign of a good, ethical life? The idea that there is nothing you need to burn before you die.”

I was mesmerized by this story, even when some of the characters steered into eye-rolling, selfish territory. I wanted to know what happened next to all of them and was transfixed until the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 4 and 1/2 stars.

Buy the paperback on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/152/9780062321176