"What kind of love are we interested in today?" he asked.
"What kind do you have?"
"Well," he said. He stood up. "I've got the love you want, the love you think you want, the love you think you want but don't when you finally get it…"
"That must be very popular."
"It is."
You know where I want to live? I want to live here, in this world. I want to live in Toronto with 249 superheroes and no spandex.
This book is adorable. It’s a proper little gem of a story that I read in an hour last Wednesday and that just left me feeling happy.
The premise is fabulously quirky: Tom is the only non-superhero of his friends, but the superpowers they possess aren’t the ability to fly or inhuman strength or X-Ray vision; they’re more just exaggerations of their quirkier personality traits. I love that, I think it’s genius.
There's The FrogKisser for example who is blessed with the ability to transform geeks into winners, yet cursed with the reality that once she enables this transformation, the origin of her initial attraction is gone. Amazing. Or, or or or “MR OPPORTUNITY: He knocks on doors and stands there. You'd be surprised how few doors get answered.” Or even Mistress Cleanasyougo – “…the most powerful superhero of all, the one everyone wishes they were... at the end of the 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…” Tell me any of that’s not GENIUS.
Tom is married to a superhero, ‘The Perfectionist,’ but he has a problem: he has been invisible but only to her since their wedding night and he only has the duration of the flight she is making to start her life over, without him, to make her see him.
This is a book about the human condition. It’s about unrequited love, and about confidence, about feeling invisible and that the people around you are somehow more than you are, that you are just you and everybody around you is somehow ‘a superhero,’ it’s about the good and the bad and the ugly that's inside everybody. This story, to me, is like a metaphor for life and it’s a wonderful study on human relationships and their complexities.
Above all though, It’s a clever, witty, poignant tribute to True Love and the bonus? It’s never saccharine.
IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!
I wish I’d read it sooner. I really wish I’d not done all my Christmas shopping because I want to gift this book TO THE WORLD. It’s precious.
