Book Review: All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman

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All My Friends Are Superheroes
Author: Andrew Kaufman
Reading Level: Adult Fiction
Genres: Fantasy | Humorous
Released: May 7th 2013 (Tenth Anniversary Edition) - October 19th 1999 (first edition)
Review Source: Purchased

All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, Perf is hypnotized by her ex-boyfriend, Hypno, to believe Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, the Perfectionist is sure Tom has abandoned her, so she's moving away. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards a plane. Tom has until they land to make her see him.

This tenth anniversary edition adds short stories, illustrations, and a foreword to the cult classic that has been a bestseller in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.

Andrew Kaufman is the author of The Waterproof Bible and The Tiny Wife.

I came across this book because I was hearing plenty of buzz about it on the Internet in the months before my purchase of it. This buzz was mainly from the YouTube personality Carrie Hope Fletcher, who is very open about her book worm traits, so I trusted her reviews and set out to buy and read the book myself. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t a long read at all, I believe the whole book, including acknowledgements and about the author, was about 145 pages - so I started and finished the book within a few hours.

This accomplishment was, in part, due to the author’s style of writing. Kaufman, in this book at least, writes in concise, simple sentences. He gets the point across quickly and efficiently. Also, he wrote in the third person point of view, which I have mentioned in other book reviews that I don’t necessarily enjoy, but I believe that because of his short sentences that I didn’t even notice this until the fifth chapter.

Now onto the actual story line. The main character goes by the name of Tom. He is a young man living in Ontario, Canada and, as the title very clearly states, all his friends are superheroes. However, don’t read this book expecting Spider-man or Wonder Woman and action-packed scenes. These superheroes seem to be embodiments of human quirks. Tom’s wife is an example. Her name is The Perfectionist, and that is all she is as a superhero - a perfectionist. Her superpower is to organize and perfect things with just a thought or wave of a hand.

The plot goes as follows: Tom and Perf, as her friends call her, are at their wedding reception with all of their super friends, including Perf’s ex-boyfriend, Hypno. His superpower is to hypnotize people. While a commotion was happening, he hypnotized Perf into believing Tom was invisible. Here’s the catch - Tom was perfectly visible to everyone else in the world except his wife for all of six months. While Kaufman walks his readers through these six months, you are introduced to many other heroes and maybe villains, depending on how loosely we’re using the word.

At the end, boy gets girl back. How? You’ll have to read the book yourself. I’m reviewing, not spoiling! Anyhow, I had fun reading the book. There may have been some other elaborate philosophical meaning that may have gone completely over my head, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I wish I had more details about how Tom interacted with the rest of the world despite the situation between him and his wife and how the heroes interacted as well. There’s small anecdotes, but I found myself craving more.