After being disfigured by a Rottweiler and withdrawing from society, Marek finds himself attending a meeting with other similarly-affected individuals. Enamored with the wheelchair-bound Janne, a girl he meets at the meeting, Marek is lured to additional meetings. When the group’s founder reveals that he wants to make a movie about the group, Marek isn’t the only reluctant one. Still, he agrees, starting down on a path of discovering who he is, and who he wants to be.
Just Call Me Superhero is a book about broken people—more emotionally than physically—and it doesn’t shy away from unpleasant issues. Marek is intensely unlikable, but compellingly negative, like a Holden Caulfield for the new generation, but not as pretentious.
This is a book about the narratives we construct around ourselves, and the roles we play and wish we could play, and as such, it’s an intense glimpse into the ugliness we all carry around inside. But it’s in Marek’s quiet, thoughtful moments that the real novel emerges: a darkly humorous look at how we can make life better for those around us. That’s when Just Call Me Superhero is at its best.
