Another Wiscon dealer room purchase. This time I bought the book at the Small Beer Press table, even though the book isn’t published by Small Beer Press. Manning the booth was David Schwartz himself, though I didn’t realize it until I came back to pick up my purchase later. I guess he got to sell his book in return for slave labor.

Superpowers was nominated for a Nebula, and deservedly so, though it didn’t win. It’s a realistic take on superheroes, focusing on the personal. In the story, having super abilities isn’t a boon. The five main characters were all richly conceived. I disagree with some reviewers who took issue with the number and quality of secondary characters. I thought they added quite a bit to the story. Unlike a lot of superhero fiction, the conflict is primarily that of self-doubt and that doubt is not caused by facing a nemesis. It’s also a pretty quick read.

Charlie and Jack invite their downstairs neighbors, fellow University of Wisconsin Madison students Caroline, Harriet and Mary Beth, to a party. The vague purpose is to get laid, but a flash of light in the sky gives all of them superpowers. The young people wake up the next morning and discover their new abilities. Charlie can hear people’s thoughts, Jack has superspeed, Mary Beth has strength, Harriet can turn invisible, and Caroline can fly.

When I was in elementary school, I used to make-believe I had super-vision. Walking to school along 3rd Avenue in what is now Shoreline, I convinced myself I could see details on 195th Street all the way from Richmond Beach Road a half mile to the south. Oh, how I wanted superhuman abilities! What could be bad about having powers?

The students in Superpowers struggle to cope, even from the beginning. In addition, to standard learning my powers difficulties, all have different ideas on what to do with them. For instance, Caroline tries to hide her flying from her fellow superfriends, even. She likes the solitude and serenity she gets floating above the Earth. She has to be dragged into the nascent crime-fighting group, the All-Stars.

The biggest issue for all of them are their secret identities. They want to maintain real lives while also being superheroes. A conspiracy is pretty hard to maintain though. People such as family members, co-workers, roommates, and a campus underground newspaper all start to figure it out. I liked following the interactions between the All-Stars and others.

The students are all pretty normal middle-class type people. That’s not too out of place for something set in Madison, Wisconsin, but it does make them all seem fairly similar. Personality-wise, they aren’t. But in terms of their situations, they feel sort of cookie-cutter. I do wish there were a little more diversity in their economic classes, or their family background, or even the languages they spoke. Several secondary characters have different backgrounds. One of my favorite interactions was between Caroline and a man she thinks is trying to kill himself. Turns out he’s José the dishwasher at the restaurant where she works and hasn’t noticed him before. Hispanic servants just blend in when you are white and self-involved like Caroline. The interactions with these characters of different backgrounds sparked the most interesting developments. I’d love to see what Schwartz could do if he made that the focus of a novel, because I think he’d do a really good job with it.

Anyhow, for a fairly small investment of time because it’s an easy read, it’s a fairly substantial story.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Seen, Read and Heard
• Andrew Wheeler at ComicMix
• Torque Control
• The Book Swede
• Electronic Cerebrectomy
• Once Upon a Bookshelf
• Calico Reaction

Title: Superpowers
Author: David J. Schwartz
Cover creator: Norm Breyfogle (illustrator) / Si Scott (title designer)
Imprint / publisher: Vintage UK
Format: Paperback
Length: 376 p.
Publication date: June 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-099-51610-1
Subject: College students — Fiction
Subject: Heroes — Fiction

Random House provided the ARC of American Wife I read for this review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. In return, I agreed to write a review of at least 25 words to be posted on LibraryThing.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s new book American Wife has certainly received a lot of buzz, and it’s not even officially out until 2 September. It doesn’t take a genius to see why. It’s a thinly disguised ripped from the headlines take on the life of Laura Bush. Some things have been changed: the Bushes are the Blackwells, the family is from Wisconsin, the elder Blackwell never made it to the White House as President, and more. But all the major events in Laura Bush’s life have parallels: an auto accident where Alice Blackwell kills a classmate, a quick marriage to rich ne’er-do-well Charlie Blackwell, Blackwell’s purchase of a baseball team, runs for governor and the presidency, and even a carefully scripted disagreement with her husband over abortion rights. I’m probably a little too cynical in thinking the differences are meant to either ward off legal action or the book was done with Laura Bush’s acquiescence and input and the differences were meant as cover. I don’t want to speculate as to motives too much though, because that’s my biggest criticism of the book.

The story is pretty pedestrian. Middle class uptight midwestern woman marries charming loose rich man, then subsequently sublimates her life to his. Really really pedestrian. And about a character type I hate. I hate female characters that have no lives of their own, where everything is domesticity. I recently found a link to the Bechdel test through Charles Stross’ blog. That test has three prongs: there exists more than one woman in the story, they talk to each other, about something other than men. Nominally this book passes that test (there’s a discussion about abortion rights and political responsibility between two women near the end of the book), but it sure feels like it doesn’t. This is all about Alice Blackwell’s kowtowing to Charlie Blackwell.

If the book were about her changing Charlie Blackwell, or being an equal partner or something redeeming, I might be more sympathetic. But it’s not. Time after time, incident after incident, Alice Blackwell metaphorically and literally says yes dear and goes back to cupcake baking and banquet hosting. Fine. Some people are like that. But I don’t need to read about it for 551 pages.

A couple of reviews I’ve seen have called this a sympathetic or compassionate portrait. Hogwash. Creating an image of someone who never participates in her own life is not sympathetic. Alice Blackwell doesn’t stand up to anyone. She doesn’t pursue the boy she has a crush on, she waits for him to make a move (which he takes over half a decade to do). She’s not responsible for hooking up with Charlie Blackwell, he’s just too handsome and charming and persistent. On and on. If these reviewers think that anyone wants to be portrayed like that, they run with a different crowd than I do.

The only way this comes out ahead for me is if it shows some sort of insight into the real Bush’s marriage. But there’s a problem with that. Curtis Sittenfeld is an author, not a psychiatrist with intimate knowledge of the First Lady’s psyche. Ability to divine the inner thoughts of someone else is not something I would credit to authors. Fictional people, sure. Real people, no. It’s simply another form of punditry and if you read folks like Beat the Press or the Daily Howler, you’ll have an idea of how futile it is to figure out motives.

So unless there’s some sort of deep research involved here, I pretty much have to say this doesn’t pass the smell test. It sure could be a portrait of Laura Bush. But more likely it is just conjecture.

Title: American wife
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Imprint / publisher: Random House
Format: Advance Readers Copy
Length: 551 p.
Publication date: September 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-6475-5
Subject: Presidents’ spouses — United States — Fiction
Subject: Women librarians — Fiction
LC classification: PS3619.I94 A8 2008