Monday, January 14, 2008

All my friends are superheroes - Andrew Kaufman

Biography : "Andrew Kaufman is a writer, film-maker and radio producer. His writing has appeared on McSweeney's website, he has completed a Director's Residency at the Canadian Film Center and his film Aberistiwith was screened at festivals across Europe and Canada. Andrew Kaufman is also a revolving cast member of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow, and now works as a producer for CBC Radio in Toronto. All my friends are superheroes is his first novel."



Bibliography :
* All my friends are superheroes (2003)



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Genre : Fiction

Canadian publisher : Coach House Press : 14,96$ CAN; 14,95$ US

English publisher : Telegram Books : 7,99£

Synopsis : Tom is a normal man, but all his friends are superheroes and he lives with a superheroines, The Perfectionist. But on the day of their wedding, Hypno, an ex of Perf's manage to make Tom invisible to her eyes. Super Perfectionist waits and waits for Tom to return, and Tom is desperate to make her see or hear him. After six months, Perf decides to take a one-way ticket to Vancouver. Tom has the time of the flight to manage to make her see him. And in-between, we discover Tom's super-friends : The Ear, The Copycat, Mistress Cleanasyougo...

To give you an idea of the book, I wanted to put here one or two passages, but unfortunately my book is in french, but if someone has the book in english and can give me the passages I want, I'd be glad.

What I think : This book is short and you can read it very rapidly. The main plot isn't exceptional, everything lies in the . A very realistic , but at the same time totally surrealistic, in short All my friends are superheroes is a superrealist book;o) I spent a good time enjoying it with a smile on my lips all along. The only thing I would criticize is the layout. All along the story, there are kind of breaks where we are introduced to the different superheroes, and I couldn't explain why, but I just don't really like the effect. So except for that point, I advise you to read it, you won't be disappointed. As I was saying this is a book written in a very surrealist , but at the same time everithing it said is quite realistic. We all know superheroes : Super-Chatterbox, Super-I'm-looking-out-of-the-window, Super-I-sing-in-the-bus, Super-I-love-everything-you-say... Whatever it is, quality or fault, we all can be a superheroe in Andrew Kaufman's fashion, even though he only counts 239 (or was it 249?) superheroes in Canada...

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