Synopses & Reviews
Successful, gorgeous, and beloved by everyone you know, the Underminer remembers your every foolish ambition and humiliating mistake--and never fails to remind you. The Underminer makes you feel suicidal. But the Underminer is your friend...Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan do us all a public service by capturing the elusive evils of an age-old archetype. To understand and resist
your toxic friend, you need
The Underminer.Review
"A treasure...wickedly funny...Studded with comic gems that beg to be read out loud."
Chicago Tribune
Review
"An insincere, name-dropping predator with a rise so meteoric that 'you' feel like crawling into your sad little apartment and eating gallons of ice cream right out of the carton while sniffling over reruns of old Bette Davis movies."
New York Times Book Review
Review
"The person in your life who always does things before you, better than you, and far more profitably than you. The kind of person who manages to express that she cares about you in a way that makes you want to kill yourself."
Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"The 'friend' who somehow manages to turn every compliment into an incredibly subtle insult, thus making you wonder whether you are truly the most neurotic person in all of Manhattan--or if your friend is just, well, evil."
New York Post
Review
"The Underminer is a small voice whispering in your ear, 'Read me.'"
Newsday
Review
"A character that is so malicious, so insensitive and sadistic, that we can only gape horror-struck as every venomous phrase rolls off her tongue."
Rocky Mountain News
Review
"A psychological predator of the highest order. A viper cloaked in velvet. The Shaquille O'Neal of schadenfreude."
Boston Globe
Review
"An ego-skewering, passive-aggressive blowhard of indeterminate gender, surfing annoyingly along the breaking waves of pop and consumer culture--from dot-com to New Age, from hip-hop to a yurt in Afghanistan--always on top and armed with a put-down."
New York Times
Synopsis
Successful, gorgeous, and beloved by everyone you know, the Underminer remembers your every foolish ambition and humiliating mistake--and never fails to remind you. The Underminer makes you feel suicidal. But the Underminer is your friend...Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan do us all a public service by capturing the elusive evils of an age-old archetype. To understand and resist your toxic friend, you need The Underminer.
About the Author
Mike Albo is a writer and performer who has brought his comedic monologues to venues all over the country and abroad. His first novel,
Hornito, was published in 2000.
Virginia Heffernan, who writes with Albo for his performances, is a television critic for the New York Times.