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The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life Paperback – January 21, 2006

by
Mike Albo (Author)
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Mike Albo (Author), Virginia Heffernan (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars 42 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 24, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1596910895
  • ISBN-13: 978-1596910898
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsSmart, sharp and cruelly funny.
By M. Kahn on February 8, 2005
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Mike Albo creates enough brilliant monologue material for hopeful actors to last the next 20 years. Written in the voice of "The Underminer", you will instantly know this person, despise them, and wish for their quick death. The book is short (any longer and the voice could've grown repetitive), and sweet, but it never pulls any punches. Sure it's one note, but it's a great note. Send this book as a gift to your friends. Or better yet, give it to the Underminer in your life.
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5.0 out of 5 starsComic Genius, Pure and Seething
By Alice Rose on February 26, 2005
Format: Hardcover
By turns haunting and hilarious, The Underminer is a 164-page bitchfest as you've never experienced. Or maybe you have. . . . Every few pages, I was stifling SHRIEKS of recognition. Truly. It was if authors Albo and Heffernan had snuck a peak at my personal life, uncovering all the demons in disguise, and one in particular. . . . My absolute favorite lines: "I mean maybe you're not feeling upset because your body is in a kind of indecision about how to handle grief" and "It's just so great how yoga has spread its influence across the four corners of America. Old people are doing it, fat people are doing it, retarded people are doing it. . . ." This is the perfect book for everyone who's ever felt as if his/her so-called friends were lording their success/money/fame/real estate coups/babies over them. Buy one for yourself, and another for your nemesis. . . .
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5.0 out of 5 starsHilarious, razor-sharp social satire
By Native New Yorker on March 19, 2005
Format: Hardcover
After reading an excerpt in The New Yorker, I couldn't wait to get this book. It's spot-on satire--deceptively breezy (so difficult to pull off, but Albo does it perfectly), filled with passages you'll love to read out loud to your partner, but able to make you squirm as it begins to dawn that you're no slouch in the undermining category yourself.

How funny is it? I laughed out loud over and over--while in a "patient's family waiting room" waiting for a loved one to come out of surgery (he's fine). Now that's funny.

I immediately went out and got Hornito; can't wait to dive in.
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5.0 out of 5 starsUNDERMINER is hilarious, pointed satire
By Heidi Rose Robbins on February 11, 2005
Format: Hardcover
We all know at least one of them: acquaintances who seem perfectly pleasant on the outside but offhandedly make you feel awful every time you encounter them. Who ARE these people, and CAN THEY BE STOPPED?? Albo and Heffernan's hilarious book finally calls this nasty social menace by his (or her!) true name: THE UNDERMINER. This book may inspire legions to finally call such "friends" on their passive-aggressions, but THE UNDERMINER is no self-help treatus: it's a hilariouly pointed piece of social satire. I can't count the number of times I had to STOP READING THIS book because I was laughing so hard. Down with Underminers and up with THE UNDERMINER!
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5.0 out of 5 starsSo freeing to have a name for them -- UNDERMINERS!
By my girls' mom on September 11, 2014
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I really don't get all the one-stars -- the reviewers must never have had an underminer in their lives. Or perhaps they *are* one and didn't get the joke! From the moment I heard an interview with the author several years ago, I knew I had to read this. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it did take a few pages to get into the rhythm of things. Every few pages I recognized various underminers from my past. Very funny! For days after my first read I laughed when particular friends or relatives made undermining comments. It's so freeing to have a word to describe them -- underminers. That first copy was passed around to several people for a couple years before I got it back, and each person (all women) who read it had such similar experiences to the poor unheard victim. Reading this book actually changed one of my "underminer" friends. I think she realized it was written in her voice and didn't like what she heard, lol.

My teen daughter has discovered several underminers in high school so when she brought up one today who undermines everything she says or wears, I decided it's time to order another copy. After she reads it she'll pass to others in her group. A must-read for teen girls as well as anyone else who's had an undermining friend, boss, relative, or neighbor!
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4.0 out of 5 starsEntertaining...if a bit unrelenting
By Dale Hrabi on April 10, 2005
Format: Hardcover
Completely diverting, if a bit one-note. Albo nails this character: The one-upping, passive-aggressive, self-esteem-eroding "friend," that we all recognize (even, disturbingly, in ourselves.)

The comic monologues from Albo's stage shows that have been adapted into this quasi-novel are funnier when he performs them--on stage, he gives the Underminer a motor-mouthed, shallow pathos that evens the score somewhat between him and his "loser" victim. This doesn't entirely come across in print, but the writing still rings hilariously true. This book doubles as a pretty good social/cultural history of the '90s.

I had a couple problems with it, however:

1) It's fairly static: The characters (the loquacious Underminer and his silent victim, a failure whom we only see through the Underminer's biased p-o-v) don't really evolve. They become more or less successful, briefly adapt trendy philosophies, but the Underminer doesn't seem to acquire wisdom, or undermine more deftly/softly/menacingly as time goes by.

2) After a while, the obnoxious Underminer is just not all that fun to be around. Although I kinda love that the book ends so very bleakly, the character has worn out his welcome by then.

Also, the interstitial illustrations and product parodies are a lovely idea, but they occasionally veer into a surreal humor that's at odds with the observational satire of the rest of the book.

But well worth reading...and if you get a chance to see Albo perform, seize it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsA Waste of Paper and Ink With a Misleading Title

People like the Underminer really exist, but this book is vile. How anyone can describe this demented dialogue as funny is beyond me. Read more

Published 12 months ago by olderandwiser
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Thanks for fast perfect ship and great price.

Published 22 months ago by Rachel W. Cronin
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very funny, strangely true to life. I have met weird passive people like this, they do exist!

Published 22 months ago by Spencer Little
5.0 out of 5 starsJust hilarious

Finally a book that is profoundly funny. I only regret that I discovered this book so late after it came out!!! I couldn't stop reading or guffawing. Read more

Published on January 28, 2014 by Jill Jones
5.0 out of 5 starsInsightful Read

Albo and his buddy Heffernan are razor sharp and entertaining writers. It's been a long time since a book captured my attention like this little tome.

Published on August 25, 2013 by Robert
1.0 out of 5 starsNot funny

I can't believe I read the reviews and bought this book. Not funny and primarily aimed at lonely cat ladies.

Published on July 10, 2013 by Daniel
4.0 out of 5 starsYou know this person

Someone recommended this to me. It was a quick read and somehow managed to make me aware of the behaviours of this personality type in a way that was humourous but not preachy.

Published on May 22, 2013 by JoeyS_NJ
3.0 out of 5 starsI had forgotten about this book... but LOOK OUT!

i actually have a friend right now who is this kind of haplessly evil
friend in a church i attend. He is like an EVIL Sancho Panza. Read more

Published on February 25, 2013 by D. L. Boering
4.0 out of 5 starsSome people can be so cruel

What a great and distressing story. The entire story is told in first person from the perspective of the underminer. Read more

Published on November 2, 2012 by JESSICA ROBINSON
1.0 out of 5 starsOne of the worst books I've read in a long time

I picked this book up at a second hand store, it was only .25 cents figured what the heck. OMG, what garbage, it was almost as if the aurthor Virginia Heffernan was not only... Read more

Published on March 15, 2012 by Clint Lara

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