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Dean Bakopoulos is an American fiction writer, an NEA and Guggenheim Fellow, and professor of English at Grinnell College.
Please Don't Come Back from the Moon was his debut novel, about fathers in Maple Rock, Detroit abandoning their families under a strange compulsion to go to the moon. It is narrated by the young Mikey, a would-be writer, whose father feels the same desire to leave. The New York Times said it "deftly weld[ed] magic realism with social satire". Entertainment Weekly gave it a B- saying it turned into a very conventional coming-of-age story. People gave it 3.5/4.
My American Unhappiness, his second novel, is narrated by Zeke Pappas, a young man compiling an inventory of American unhappiness for a struggling non-profit organization. The New York Times found Bakopoulos charming but the book too frivolous and arch. The Los Angeles Times found that some of the characters were one-dimensional, there only to advance the plot, but found the satire was pleasantly combined with warmth and affection for its subjects.
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