Third Class Superhero

June 12, 2006
Issues of identity and insecurity simmer throughout Yu's debut collection, an imaginative excursion into the burrow Kafka built. In "My Last Days as Me," the unnamed star of the hit TV show Me and My Mother
chafes at the recasting of his onscreen mother and eradicates the line between actor and character. The unnamed man in "Man of Quiet Desperation Goes on Short Vacation" evaluates his existential condition as frequently as a time-obsessed man checks his watch. And in the title story, "Moisture Man" strives to improve his position in the superhero hierarchy, which means constant self-appraisal and comparison to his more successful counterparts ("fireball shooters. A few are ice makers. Half a dozen telepath/empaths"). Yu flirts with formal experimentation—"Problems for Self-Study" unfolds as a complicated multiple choice test, for example—but tempers his fantastical constructions with level prose. (The first two paragraphs of "The Man Who Became Himself" are "He was turning into something unspeakable" and "At the office, people avoided the issue.") There is abundant humor, though, and Yu allows the reader to feel pathos without patronization; a neat trick, in a compulsively readable collection.

September 1, 2006
This unusual debut collection of 11 stories uses an inventive style to probe fundamental questions about modern life from a variety of distinct perspectives. In the title story, a halfhearted superhero called Moisture Man betrays his fellow superheroes to the bad guys in exchange for the power of flying but soon discovers that there is mixture of good and evil in everyone -a common thread throughout these stories. In -401(K), - a man and his wife lead shallow lives as active members of a money-making culture, -buying things we don't want to feel closer to the things we know we can't get. - In -The Man Who Became Himself, - a character named David observes himself as if he were having an out-of-body experience, scraping away his pretentious outside shell to discover a man isolated and alone. The outstanding -Man of Quiet Desperation Goes on Short Vacation - features a protagonist forever trapped in uneventful static moments. These stories read like entries in a private journal, with clever metaphors and philosophical introspection related through absurd situations that capture the vagueness in our lives. Recommended for all collections." -David A. Beronä , Plymouth State Univ., NH"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.