recently, i finished reading Dean Bakopoulos Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon. i had read such glowing reviews of this book that i was really excited to read it. boy, was i disappointed. it was the most frustrating read i’ve had in quite some time. the first chapter is unquestionably beautiful (incidentally you can read it as a short story at Zoetrope). but after that it just, well i can’t say that it fell apart, because it didn’t. it’s just that it lacked severely in the so what? department. it just sort of meanders through the life of Michael Smolij and his friends who grew up together, and who, when they were 16, had their fathers disappear. like six of them, the fathers just disappeared the summer they were 16. weird, but it’s not enough of a driving force to get you through the book. you see the anger and the uncertainity it brings to their life, but it’s not wratched up enough to get you to want to turn the page.

it’s just a story that kind of says hey, this is his life and you should like it because i said so, sort of thing. there was absolutely no tension in the book at all. none. and it was disappointing, because sections of the book are so wonderfully written, you wanted to care more. you wanted there to be more, but there isn’t. there’s just michael’s sad story that just eventually peters right out.