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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780786891078
ISBN number: 0786891076
Label: Hyperion
Manufacturer: Hyperion
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 144
Printing Date: September 01, 2006
Publishing house: Hyperion
Sale Popularity Level: 193583
Studio: Hyperion
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
One of our country's most acclaimed and beloved entertainers, Steve Martin has written a novella that is unexpectedly perceptive about relationships and life. Martin is profoundly wise when it comes to the inner workings of the human heart.
Mirabelle is the 'shopgirl' of the title, a young woman, beautiful in a wallflowerish kind of way, who works behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus 'selling things that nobody buys anymore...'
Slightly lost, slightly off-kilter, very shy, Mirabelle charms because of all that she is not: not glamorous, not aggressive, not self-aggrandizing. Still there is something about her that is irresistible.
Mirabelle captures the attention of Ray Porter, a wealthy businessman almost twice her age. As they tentatively embark on a relationship, they both struggle to decipher the language of love -- with consequences that are both comic and heartbreaking. Filled with the kind of witty, discerning observations that have brought Steve Martin critical success, Shopgirl is a work of disarming tenderness.
Amazon.com Review:
Steve Martin's very first foray into fiction is as assured as it is surprising. Set in Los Angeles, its fascination with the surreal body fascism of the upper classes feels like the comedian's familiar territory, but the shopgirl of the book's title may surprise his fans. Mirabelle works in the glove department of Neiman's, 'selling things that nobody buys any more.' Spending her days waiting for customers to appear, Mirabelle 'looks like a puppy standing on its hind legs, and the two brown dots of her eyes, set in the china plate of her face, make her seem very cute and noticeable.' Lonely and vulnerable, she passes her evenings taking prescription drugs and drawing 'dead things,' while pursuing an on-off relationship with the hopeless Jeremy, who possesses 'a slouch so extreme that he appears to have left his skeleton at home.' Then Mr. Ray Porter steps into Mirabelle's life. He is much older, rich, successful, divorced, and selfish, desiring her 'without obligation.' Complicating the picture is Mirabelle's voracious rival, her fellow Neiman's employee Lisa, who uses sex 'for attracting and discarding men.'
The mutual incomprehension, psychological damage, and sheer vacuity practiced by all four of Martin's characters sees Shopgirl veer rather uncomfortably between a comedy of manners and a much darker work. There are some startling passages of description and interior monologue, but the characters are often rather hazy types. Martin tries too hard in his endeavor to write a psychologically intense novel about West Coast anomie, but Shopgirl is still an enjoyable, if rather light, read. --Jerry Brotton
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Frankly, heft was the deciding factor in my decision to read Shopgirl. It's a slip of a novel -- a novella, as the cover proclaims -- slight and ever-so-slightly precious, like most self-proclaimed novellas. It feels good in the hand, though, much like I imagine the gloves that introduce its two main characters must feel.
It is undeniably elegant on the inside as well, both in its faintly-stilted prose and the strange, spare atmosphere it conjures up. Shopgirl evokes a Los Angeles more like the one depicted in 1950s L.A. Confidential than the post-millenial version I tool through daily. The archetypes are modern, but they feel quaint, like girdled Suzy Parkers instead of juicy Carmen Electras.
It's not so much that the characters are unreal as it is they are remote--real seen through glass, real seen from one cool remove. What the novel(la) did more than anything was make me want to see the movie; I wanted to see actors inhabit these characters and bring them to life because I could not connect with them on the page: this Seattle millionaire, this alt.rockboy, this Silver Lake artist/shopgirl. Everything is a clean, sleek surface, with no grubby human bits to grab onto.
Steve Martin has the dark side down, like most funny people. He sketches out a sad, beautiful, believable story of two people running up hard against their limitations. But like Capote, it's curiously unaffecting given what the characters are going through. I suspect Martin is a fan of order, and imposes it where he can, thinking the discipline serves the storytelling.
But it's the mess that makes a good story interesting. A writer can clean it up; a writer and director and editor can't.
Which is why I enjoyed reading Shopgirl. And probably why I enjoyed Shopgirl, the movie, just a little bit more.
Rated by buyers 
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By penning a novella, Steve Martin allowed the true emotional roller-coaster of joy, sadness, the bitter truth and heartbreak of love to drive the story. Three people from such different backgrounds are each shown struggling and grasping for something - anything - which can come to their emotional rescue.
At the apex of the triangle is an aspiring artist who is a sales person in an upscale designer clothing store in Beverly Hills and alone in all that is not real. Her suitors are a millionaire who collects lovers - but must ultimately keep them at arm's length - and an artist who is good at doing nothing all day.
In a place where image is everything, loneliness may rule the day. So simple a story yields such complexity in the vast parking lot of life.
Rated by buyers -
This short book is a reasonable endeavor by the author to offer commentary on the disaffections of modernity through stereotypical characters: the cute and pleasant, underemployed retail girl who has to operate on anti-depressants to handle her dead-end job and life; the wealthy middle-aged man who can only buy pseudo-relationships; the cynical, yet desperate, girl who is in a race with the years to remake and sell herself; and the self-absorbed, clueless techie.
The author's focus is on Mirabelle, a 28 year old from Vermont, who is totally bored in her job at the glove counter in the Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills. She has a Masters in fine arts, but finds it to be an immense struggle to find a way to utilize her artistic talents or to meet desirable guys. The low point in her life has to be the inept, unappreciated relationship she has with the techie Jeremy who she meets in a laundromat.
Enter Ray Porter, a wealthy entrepreneur, who just happens to notice Mirabelle one day in her store. Despite the immediate improvement of Mirabelle's economic condition due to the largesse of Ray and of her love life, neither wants to dig beyond the surface and admit that the other one cannot be or give what is wanted.
The book is not comedic with one exception. Lisa, a co-worker of Mirabelle and intent on using her physical assets to attract men, mistakenly gives Jeremy the time of his life after mistakenly thinking that he is Ray, who she is trying to steal from Mirabelle.
As said, the characters are rather stereotypical, yet the author does share some of their thinking. The focus is kept on the personal level with wider ramifications mostly implied. Even though the characters are recognizable types, the story itself is a bit contrived with a predictable ending. Nonetheless, the book is a quick and enjoyable read.
Rated by buyers -
I was expecting to enjoy this. my flatmate raved about the book, saying how moved she was by it and how wonderfully touching the story was. I had read 'the pleasure of my company' and had loved it and so look forward to this one.
And in truth one can understand why a reader would be effected by it. Steve Martin is a wise and philosophical writer, full of nuggets of original insights into our world. He explores the lives of lost people, people whom as he says appear for the most part as chalk outlines of themselves to others and he reveals the wealth of beauty that can be found where you would least expect. For these qualities alone, Steve Martin is worth reading and admiring.
However, the book doesnt work. And that actually because of his insights rather than despite. It is not just that the book has no story, and no compelling action. The book is a character study after all and its slender plot might be forgiven. But this is the point, the book with all its sensitivity and intelligence, fails to create the sensation that these are real people living real lives. I could not engage with any of the charactors, whilst admitting that i recognised all of them for there was much truth to them, but nothing that made them whole. This might be because Steve martin uses limited dialogue and the narrative sits quite flatly on the page. All in all though, for all the poetic gestures, which are delicate and finely tuned,one feels as if one is reading a very smart treatise on the nature of romantic relationships. As a work of philosophy the book is successful but as a novel written to engage and fascinate it does not.
Rated by buyers -
Ok, so the very first half was pretty good. A little confusing but I got the idea, but then the ending was just so fast. All the sudden she quit her job then the subsequent thing you know he got her own gallery? And it feels like the movie was mainly focused on steve martin and claire danes while the weird jeremy guy just got left out forgotten. Great acting by Claire Danes however. After all it is just Sad, so the Jeremy guy got her advice of "just do it" and became what she called "successful"? switched from a all banged up volkswagen to a hyundai? because he read some wacky book on some bus?
and the fact that the old dude just wanted to sleep with her? scratch that both the old guy and the weirdo Just wanted to sleep with her and, huh?? she's that desperate? it's a little disturbing.... very disturbing
the plot just sucks, but i think the actors did a good job acting i guess.
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