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    My American Unhappiness
    My American Unhappiness
    My American Unhappiness
    Ebook313 pages4 hours

    My American Unhappiness

    By Dean Bakopoulos

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    “Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”). 

    A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 16, 2011
    ISBN9780547821795
    My American Unhappiness
    Author

    Dean Bakopoulos

    Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Please Don't Come Back from the Moon and My American Unhappiness. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is the winner of a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is the writer-in-residence at Grinnell College, and lives in Iowa.

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    Reviews for My American Unhappiness

    3.5/5

    32 ratings5 reviews

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    • 2/5
      My American Unhappiness is the a fiction story of Zeke Pappas who is a widowed man working on an oral history of “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” He is the director of the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative (GMHI). Zeke’s mother and his nieces are living with him. Zeke is quite happy with this arrangement but his mother wants him to marry and if he doesn’t she is going to have the girls go to Michigan and live with their aunt. Zeke is desparate to find a wife before his mother dies of lung cancer. Zeke isn’t paying attention to what is happening around him, the money is all gone and the federal government is investigating.The story is set in Madison, Wisconsin during the last years of Bush and the election of Obama. The political stance is liberal and the book seems to be written as a vehicle to espouse the author’s political opinions. Zeke tells his story in first person therefore we only know Zeke’s point of view. Zeke is unreliable and we soon learn that he can’t be trusted. It took awhile before this felt like a story but it did read fast. As a story it wasn’t particularly original. Because it was Zeke telling the story, no character was developed beyond Zeke’s view. Because Zeke is falling apart, the story tended to also fall apart. While there was little swearing and f bombs initially, they began to explode all over the place. The writing wasn’t that great though the author had some pretty nice quotes throughout the book. These can be found on the book page here at Shelfari so I am not going to repeat them here. I really can’t give this book much more that 2.5 stars. Because it was a fast read that I didn’t have to torture myself to finish, I gave it the 2.5 rather than the straight 2.
    • 4/5
      Poor, pompous, sweetly deluded Zeke. If Bakopoulos brings his character back in a future novel, let's hope he gets a little more happiness. Oh. Wait. Zeke isn't supposed to be happy. Remember the title, silly?
    • 4/5
      Yes, this is actually a laugh-out loud book about unhappiness. Zeke's funding for his Inventory of American Unhappiness Project is running out. In the meantime, while gauging the unhappiness of everyone around him, he ignores his own well-being. Zeke is a likeable narrator that just needs a good waking up to discover the riches that surround him. This is a warm-hearted book that will cheer you up, even as it inventories the unhappiness of America.
    • 4/5
      4 stars is a rather oddly high rating to give this book.

      After all, near the end I realized I wanted Zeke to die, not in a punishment sort of way but because I found his insanity so annoying.
    • 1/5
      This is so clearly a case of the wrong book ending up in the wrong hands that I question if I should even write this review. Zeke Pappas, director of the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative, is working on a special project, a chronicle of American Unhappiness. He spends his days interviewing subjects on what makes them unhappy and his nights caring for his two young neices (his brother died in Iraq and sister-in-law died driving drunk) and his ill mother. When his mother learns she is terminally ill she stipulates that Zeke gets custody of his neices only if he is married before she dies. Desperate, and yes I do mean DESPERATE, to get married, Zeke alternates between the women he is acquianted with attempting to build a relationship that could lead to marriage with one of them. Meanwhile some mysterious branch of the government begins to investigate, in a very sinister way, his work and how he is spending government money.Zeke is so sad, deluded, paranoid, and just plain messed up that I couldn't identify with him at all. If I ever met this man I would run away screaming and never look back. I suppose that's the point of a book like this. Zeke is a charicature of the typically unhappy american. Though the end of the book is meant to be hopeful I just found it depressing. The style was so far from my sense of humor that nothing about it was funny or entertaining. I know others have enjoyed My American Unhappiness, unfortunately it missed the mark for me.

    Book preview

    My American Unhappiness - Dean Bakopoulos

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