Shopgirl

My sister Susan gave me this book last time I was in L.A.  The cover is a still from the movie of the same name starring the writer of the book - Steve Martin.  I almost never read a book that has a movie for its cover.  But Pooh (some nicknames are meant to last forever) tells me I'll like it.  Plus this is a novella - not a book - since it is only 130 pages long.

Mirabella works at Neiman Marcus in the glove department.  If you picture that whole set up in your mind, you know just how exciting that must be.  She is a lovely, unenlightened, repressed, solitary figure who has a fling with Jeremy because she wants to feel the warmth of a human hug; then later enchants a letch named Ray Porter.  Who will she end up with hmmmmm.....  The narrator speaks in a voice that does not really interface with the characters.  It is an objective, removed voice that is amused in a matter of fact sort of way.  The prose is pretty and clever but never cutesy.  There are no gags.  Just astute, simple sentences that eventually enchant me. "Jeremy arrives thirty minutes later and leans against the wall with a slouch so extreme that he appears to have left his skeleton at home."  Can't you just picture Steve Martin writing that. I don't plan on seeing the movie.  These characters are fully formed in my mind and I don't want them to change. I'll give this book a B+.