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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10873.Shopgirl_A_Novella?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Shopgirl: A Novella" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166334507m/10873.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10873.Shopgirl_A_Novella?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Shopgirl: A Novella</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7103.Steve_Martin">Steve Martin</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6901897?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars I picked up Shopgirl at the Strand for $4.95. I had heard of it vaguely as the movie with Steven Martin in it as an adaptation of the book Steve Martin wrote. I purchased it as a book that I could take with me on vacation and have it be ultimately disposable. Sometimes this trick backfires on me as I end up really liking a book and toting it home with me regardless of my original intentions. This is not one of those times.
 
 Shopgirl tells the story of depressed, artist Mirabelle who works behind the glove counter at Neimann Marcus. She has few friends, doesn’t do much with her art, and is basically wafting through life trying not to get mired in depression. Enter Ray Porter (the Steve Martin character), a 50 year old man also drifting through life, searching for the perfect woman by running through all of the imperfect ones as fast as he can. The two embark on a relationship which predictably ends badly, but also predictably teaches both of them something about themselves and allows them to grow as people and friends.
 
 I didn’t have super high hopes for this book at the outset, having seen another example of Steve Martin’s writing in the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile (a play which starts in a very promising manner and ends with an Elvis impersonator beaming down into a small French café in Monmartre. Really.) Surprisingly, this book is relatively well written and even contains some witty insights on relationships between people. Here are two examples of such passages:
 
 … Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked. (p8)
 
 “I am traveling too much right now,” he says. In this sentence, he serves notice that he would like to come into town, sleep with her, and leave. Mirabelle believe that he is expressing frustration at having to leave town and that he is trying to cut down on traveling. … So now they have had the Conversation. What neither of them understands is that these conversations are meaningless. They are meaningless to the sayer and they meaningless to the hearer. The sayer believes they are heard and the hearer believe that they are never said. (p64-65)
 
 That being said, I couldn’t get past the fact that this book is essentially chick lit. It might be semi-good chick lit (if that isn’t an oxymoron), and it may have been written by a man, but it’s chick-lit nevertheless. It has all of the hallmarks of chick-lit with a little bit of Paulo Coelho style self-discovery – no wonder it was a NYT best seller. I can’t recommend it without reservation, but if you want a short book for a quick plane/train ride, it would certainly do the job.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/425220?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Lissa's review
rating:

I picked up Shopgirl at the Strand for $4.95. I had heard of it vaguely as the movie with Steven Martin in it as an adaptation of the book Steve Martin wrote. I purchased it as a book that I could take with me on vacation and have it be ultimately disposable. Sometimes this trick backfires on me as I end up really liking a book and toting it home with me regardless of my original intentions. This is not one of those times.

Shopgirl tells the story of depressed, artist Mirabelle who works behind the glove counter at Neimann Marcus. She has few friends, doesn’t do much with her art, and is basically wafting through life trying not to get mired in depression. Enter Ray Porter (the Steve Martin character), a 50 year old man also drifting through life, searching for the perfect woman by running through all of the imperfect ones as fast as he can. The two embark on a relationship which predictably ends badly, but also predictably teaches both of them something about themselves and allo...more I picked up Shopgirl at the Strand for $4.95. I had heard of it vaguely as the movie with Steven Martin in it as an adaptation of the book Steve Martin wrote. I purchased it as a book that I could take with me on vacation and have it be ultimately disposable. Sometimes this trick backfires on me as I end up really liking a book and toting it home with me regardless of my original intentions. This is not one of those times.

Shopgirl tells the story of depressed, artist Mirabelle who works behind the glove counter at Neimann Marcus. She has few friends, doesn’t do much with her art, and is basically wafting through life trying not to get mired in depression. Enter Ray Porter (the Steve Martin character), a 50 year old man also drifting through life, searching for the perfect woman by running through all of the imperfect ones as fast as he can. The two embark on a relationship which predictably ends badly, but also predictably teaches both of them something about themselves and allows them to grow as people and friends.

I didn’t have super high hopes for this book at the outset, having seen another example of Steve Martin’s writing in the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile (a play which starts in a very promising manner and ends with an Elvis impersonator beaming down into a small French café in Monmartre. Really.) Surprisingly, this book is relatively well written and even contains some witty insights on relationships between people. Here are two examples of such passages:

… Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked. (p8)

“I am traveling too much right now,” he says. In this sentence, he serves notice that he would like to come into town, sleep with her, and leave. Mirabelle believe that he is expressing frustration at having to leave town and that he is trying to cut down on traveling. … So now they have had the Conversation. What neither of them understands is that these conversations are meaningless. They are meaningless to the sayer and they meaningless to the hearer. The sayer believes they are heard and the hearer believe that they are never said. (p64-65)

That being said, I couldn’t get past the fact that this book is essentially chick lit. It might be semi-good chick lit (if that isn’t an oxymoron), and it may have been written by a man, but it’s chick-lit nevertheless. It has all of the hallmarks of chick-lit with a little bit of Paulo Coelho style self-discovery – no wonder it was a NYT best seller. I can’t recommend it without reservation, but if you want a short book for a quick plane/train ride, it would certainly do the job....less

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