"Shopgirl" by Steve Martin
This was a pleasant surprise. I won it on the Blogroll Game. After my 2nd unavailable choice, Susan gave up and just sent me this. I'm glad she did. I'm not much of a slapstick fan. I've never been fond of Lucy, the three Stooges or any of the Saturday Night alumni, and I expected uberlameness from the likes of Steve Martin. But I was charmed by the book.
It's a simple story about two people who embark on a romantic relationship. Problem is, neither of them are really in tune with what they actually need from such a relationship. Ray spots a girl about half his age, Mirabelle, working at the glove counter and is immediately smitten with her. Mirabelle is looking for a decent man and decides to date the rich, successful businessman. And both find themselves seeing in the other person what they want to see---not what is there.
And about Steve Martin---I really enjoyed his writing. It was intelligent and humerous. Humerous as in witty. One phrase I especially liked was when Mirabelle was describing her fellow sales-clerks when they are still. She states "their faces become vacuous and frozen, like the Easter Island of the Barbie Dolls." LOL
4 comments:
Uberlameness, lol. I like that word.
It is a nice book. I also enjoyed the movie - good soundtrack, and Claire Danes is lovely in it.
Ooh, glad you liked it! It's one of my favorites, too.
I saw him briefly on Letterman last night (just surfing, not really watching). Apparentely he has a new book coming out. I've been curious about this one, but didn't really care for the movie--except for Jason Shwartzman (I probably hacked the spelling of his name terribly).
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