Yesterday I read All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman (published in 2003).  I loved it from the first page straight through to the last page. This book is funny (laugh out loud) and fresh.  It is a charming and suave love story with a most original wrench thrown in the machinery of love.  No one needs to die or mistakenly break up or fall in with Evil in this love story; a mere disappearance will do. Our hero (normal, not super) becomes invisible on his wedding day but only to his wife. He has to reinstate her vision of him or he will lose her forever.  How’s that for a premise?  Actually, it sounds almost Shakespearean but given all the superheroes floating and flying and slinking around, dipping in and out, this is not Elizabethan England.

In fact we are in Canada and superheroes abound (of course: we all know about the low crime rates and fantastic, cheap health care).  The powers of these superheroes, at times listed in encyclopedic fashion, are indeed super and quite urbane. Their unique powers make perfect sense in the crazy world that we live in.  My favorite (and I will only give away one but trust me, these superheroes are brilliantly imagined) is Mistress Cleanasyougo:  “At the end of every day she folds her clothes.  She never leaves scissors on the table, pens with no ink are thrown in the trash, wet towels are always hung up, dishes are washed directly after dinner and nothing is left unsaid.”  You go, girl.

Even with such fantastic powers, just because “you’re special really doesn’t mean anything. You still have to get dressed in the morning.  Your shoelaces still break.  Your lover will still leave you if you don’t treat her right.”   And when a broken-hearted superhero wreaks revenge for love lost, our normalhero, Tom, becomes invisible to his new wife.

Tom must figure out how to save his superhero wife and himself and their marriage, but using only the good old standby powers of love and faith and ingenuity.  Let’s hear it for the regular Joe, er, Tom.

Read this book and you will love again and be happy and sleep with only good dreams (and only with the right people).  That is my super power: to transform from cranky, before reading All My Friends Are Superheroes, to happy, after finishing this delightful book.  The wonder of it is that we all have that transforming power if we just read great books.  Put down the bottle, throw out the pill box, break up with the rotten lover and hug your friends, superheroes all.  Great good comes from reading great books.  Enjoy.