Mostly Hero

Booker Prize winner Burns (Milkman) uses the tropes of superheroes and supervillains to explore the complications of real human relationships in this playful novella. A 26-year-old woman known as the femme fatale is dating a man called the superhero; the two are in love, but a magic spell drives the femme fatale to try to kill the superhero, who’s afraid of getting close to people, partly because he suspects his family harbors dark secrets. It turns out the femme fatale’s “out-of-time, eccentric great aunt,” who lives by herself in a skyscraper with secret passages, is an accomplished villain, and the superhero has a dossier on her. She might also be the superhero’s grandmother. The great-aunt is gearing up for one last attempt to take over the world, putting her on a collision course with the superhero—but as near deaths, real deaths, and betrayals pile up, the femme fatale and the superhero must also contend with the state of their romance, having “escalated what should have been a simple, harmonious love relationship into some critical, extreme, ‘heroes and villains’, disaster-upon-disaster.” Burns zooms through the comic action scenes and slyly reveals what’s truly at stake: two people learning to see themselves and their problems as merely ordinary. It adds up to a charming metaphorical love story. Agent: David Grossman, David Grossman Literary. (May)