Rating: 
Summary: A Satisfying, Quick Read. Highly Recommended!
Review: I have found that as Steve Martin matures, his work matures as well, and becomes enjoyable on many different levels. Shopgirl is another wonderful example of that maturation. Like many others here, I also could not put the book down until it was done. I found it sincerely enjoyable, with characters I could care about. I continued to wonder what happened to them after I was done with the book, a sure sign that I found it compelling. Unlike a lot of books I have read lately, the majority of the characters evolved, learned from their experiences, allowed themselves to shaped by them. You didn't get the feeling that you'd come right back to where you started when you got to the end, that all was for naught. There is more than one relationship explored. There is not only Mirabelle and Ray, but also each of them with themselves, with various supporting characters, and even a couple of supporting characters' relationships with THEMselves. It's about how we come into contact with some people in our lives before we're really ready to, and how we become ready, an experience I know I've had before. It didn't revolutionalize my life or anything, but I could definately see myself on some of its pages. Shopgirl may well be L.A. Story in book form (I admit I haven't seen it), but it obviously comes from a place that Mr. Martin is familiar with.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Mr. Martin creates a lovely novella that packs more soul than a 400 page novel. Shopgirl is gorgeous for everything it is not. It is not pretentious or filled with pages of banal dialogue and description. Mr. Martin writes only what you need to know. The tender relationship between Ray and Mirabelle is created with a sense of muted humor. The pages turn quickly and by the end, like a good writer should do, the characters grow and change in directions unforeseen from the beginning. Mr. Martin also captures the strange sense of longing and loneliness that accompanies life in LA. He is a fine writer. More, please.
Rating: 
Summary: Barely Readable
Review: In spite of this "Novella" being highly recommended by a typically credible book reviewer and being further inspired to read the book upon listening to Steve himself set the stage. I found this book a yawner. Steve demonstrated extensive knowledge of pharmacueticals, was able to work the F word in masterfully, was able to use big words in a single sentence (Superman?) and plausibly communicated some insight into the thoughts and feelings of one woman and one man. Unfortunately none save the latter, contributed anything of substance to the story. The idea that Steve may consider his writing a treatise on a the human condition, outside his own personal experience, (why else publish it?) is a bit unsettling. I gave the book two stars only because in spite of the fact that I had to trudge through this mercifully short story. I did finish reading it. I am just not quite sure why. If I may say, "I know women Mr. Martin, and you ain't no woman." Perhaps the Barbarian of SNL fame would put it like this.. "Could this work possibly be the Rosetta stone of humanity?. The single key to unlock the timeless mystery of the complexity and intricacy of the female mind while simutaneously revealing to women how the true value of the male psyche lay in it's primordial Neanderthal simplicity? Could this be the dawn of a new era of understanding, giving rise to deep, lifelong relationships bringing joy and happiness thoughout the world??? NAAAAAAAH!" Please stick to comedy Mr. Martin I could sure use a good laugh after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: An impressive showing by Martin
Review: I found it very difficult to put this book down until I was through it. The characters in Shopgirl are interesting, and while all but the main one (Mirabelle) seem shallow, the author does a masterful job of painting the complexity of the psyche of the "shopgirl." Perhaps those looking for the comic Martin in this book will be disappointed, but anyone who appreciates a darn good read and excellent writing will be quite satisfied. I was.
Rating:
Summary: STEVE MARTIN "DELIVERS THE GOODS"
Review: I have to give this book a 5 star rating for two reasons. First of all, it's a "novella" as it states right on the front of the cover and, since a novella is described as a form of short novel rich in realism and satire, Martin certainly delivers on this score. Since satire is the use of sarcasm or irony in describing human folly and vice, who is better than Steve Martin to expound on this subject. The second reason for the 5 star rating is that the main character's first name is Mirabelle. That's worth a star all on its own. I guess you'd have to have been living on another planet this week not to have seen Martin touting his book on all the talk shows. Having liked everything he has done in the past, I took a chance, went right to Amazon and the next day had the book in my hand. (I know, I was also surprised at the unbelievably quick delivery). I'm always amazed when creative people can be creative in so many different areas. For all of Martin's jokes and foibles, he has now proven to me that he is also a talented author. We are introduced to Mirabelle, 28, as she is working behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus. While most of us might find this job less than desirable, Mirabelle is proud of her counter but has dreams of bigger and better things -- perhaps being promoted to the perfume counter where she can experience the one thing in life she longs for.....people to talk to. (I'm crying for her already). For all her beauty and poise, Mirabelle is a loser at love and perhaps even life. Enter Mr. Ray Porter, 50's, single and wealthy and the real irony of the story begins. The author's descriptions of the sometimes mundane people, places and things are exceptional but his right on target descriptions of the feelings of the two main characters is nothing short of masterful. This is a poignant story of finding your place in life and finding that place within yourself where you can "happily" reside. One of my favorite descriptions in the book comes when Martin is describing Mirabelle's trip home from work each day. It is a 15 mile ride down Beverly Hills Boulevard and starts out in a swank part of town and, as the trip proceeds, the area gradually becomes less than desirable. Steve Martin describes this as a "monopoly board in reverse." I think this is so clever and often wonder why I can't come up with an analogy like that. I guess the reason why is that Martin is creative and I'm not. This book is so true to form that it reads almost like a memoir of something that has truly happened. One can't help but wonder if Steve Martin is, himself, searching for Mirabelle or if, in fact, he has let someone like Mirabelle slip through his fingers. Because this book is so well-written and because Mr. Martin lives on the West coast, I will have to forgive him one major editing snafu. There is no way in the world that you could get on a plane in New York headed for Vermont at 8AM, sit on the runway for an hour before taking off, arrive at the airport in Vermont in time to board a bus which will ride for 150 miles and reach your destination at the bus station in another town in Vermont at 11:30AM. No way Jose......or should I say No way Steve.
Rating:
Summary: Shopgirl - No Markdowns Here
Review: As one who honors the creative and ranks it right up there with courage and character, I have to say Steve Martin is at the head of the class. To get there he has traveled what most would consider a reverse route, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I saw him first in the Seventies when he was still working 100 person rooms. I honestly think that he extended my first marriage several years, simply by his being, as my then wife put it, the first man "I've seen who's crazier than you." (I was honored then and am humbled now.) From the arrow through his head to the "I've got happy feet" routine, he could easily be said to have honed the ridiculous its keenest edge. Now comes "Shopgirl", a sublime novella that reads like a poem, written in the present tense, with pluperfect timing and a natural rhythm that understands both the prism of the mind and the darkness that invades its gloomiest depths. Without naming names and explicating plot twists, (It is a novella, of course, and even a little explicating goes a long way towards replicating, and then what's the use of buying the book.) there are few people of insight who will not identify some with one or more the characters, to the point even of wondering how Martin could have possibly known that about them. Buy this book, but do yourself a favor. Don't speed through it. Savor it. Read each word and feel each meaning, for this work is as much about writing as it is about disaster and triumph. It must have been an exquisite pain the Martin endured to write something this sublime and this revealing. Most great comics are also great tragedians, Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, for example. Martin's depth is telling. What hath he wrought (or is it writ)? He may think I'm way off base, but imagine Olive Oyl meets Sylvia Plath and the Frog/Prince. You can't? Then buy this book. I'd be surprised if you didn't think it fit like a glove.
Rating:
Summary: Same old, same old? No way!
Review: "The metamorphosis most wanted by the wives of important men is that they become important in their own right," the third chapter of Shopgirl declares. "This distinction is achieved by wielding power over any and all and is characterized by an intense obsession with spending.... In Beverly Hills, young men, searching for young women who remind them of their face-lifted mothers, are stranded and forlorn in a sea of natural-looking twenty-five-year-olds." It's the same city covered in Steve Martin's L.A. Story, but this time, though the tone is still ironic -- therefore loving -- the gloves are almost off. And gloves play a large role in Shopgirl. Mr. Martin's book has been reviewed elsewhere with an emphasis on its female glove-seller with an MFA, Mirabelle. While it's true that our eyes are on her, it's well to recall Martin's expertise with magic and sleight of hand. Of course we focus on Mirabelle -- and while we do, we miss the development of Mr. Ray Porter (the frequent honorific separates this shy man from full acknowledgement of his own humanity) into someone who at last, at least, partially "gets it". Here is a man, 50s, with perhaps a touch of Asperger's (for more info, try www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/), in the habit of taking women at their word, even when they tell him that of course they want to know if he sleeps with someone else. He thus considers it an act of simple courtesy to so inform them -- and is confused by their natural shock and pain. By the end of the book, thank God, he has grown into new knowledge -- and, one hopes, a one-woman-at-a-time philosophy. The book's language sounds in the mind both simple and spare -- it is neither. Hemingway would have severely reduced it -- though I wish a severer editor had ripped out the occasional weed: three "always"s in three lines (page 3) distract from the rest of the page. Whatever happened to "forever"? But the names! With L.A. Story's wacky weatherman Harris Telemacher as precedent (Harris, "soldier"; the surname after the son who did as his father directed, murdering Penelope's suitors -- Telemachus's name carries a meaning of "far-off power", and Harris does soldier on in his quest for someone to love and be loved by, aided by a power brought to light in a highway sign), Martin names his characters with such evident delight and significance: Mirabelle, "of extraordinary beauty"; Jeremy, "appointed by God" (presumably to possess Mirabelle at book's end); and Ray Porter, the "kingly keeper of the gate". The gate to ...? To himself, well-protected by layers only gradually shed, as the old overcoat cherished by a battle-scarred veteran who has finally trudged out of the high, dry, cold to find himself in a warm and fertile land. It is possible to read Shopgirl as a beautifully-written, sincere apology from its author to women he has unwittingly hurt through ignorance and a certain odd perception coloring everything he has heretofore observed, like that of an alien anthropologist checking out Earthling phenomena. NASCAR, for example. (How easy it is to dismiss car racing as an expensive demonstration of the elemental, sperm circling the egg, only one the winner. Yet we know there must be something more to it than that.) As an apology, Shopgirl displays honesty and humility and tenderness, traits of enormous value in an man, fictional or alive.
Rating:
Summary: Steve Martin: A Brutally Honest Writer
Review: This will be brief, unpolished and not a summary. Shopgirl was a beautifully ironic tale that demostrates Steve Martin's wisdom through brilliant writing. A Spanish Professor of mine once described Borges' writing as "brutal," and Steve Martin's Shopgirl is just that. He exposes Mirabelle and Ray's flaws with tender affection, but without mercy. From the moment I entered his fictional reality I felt absorbed into Mirabelle's world. It is Martin's focus on the meaningful details of daily life that express her melancholy but kind nature. I felt equally absorbed by Ray Porter, his logic and sensuality, yet lack of understanding. Martin succeeds in capturing the conscious, as well as unconscious, motivations for all his characters. He interweaves the events with an intricate look at the personal transformation each undergoes. Frankly, I better understand some of the men who have left their mark on my life because of Martin's cunning insights into the hearts and subconscious minds of both genders. The most compelling and central part of Shopgirl was "The Conversation." Ray understands that Mirabella will soon be his sexual conquest, but "because of Ray's fairness doctrine: before the clothes come off, speeches must be made... "The conversation consists of one involved party telling another involved party the limits of their interest. It is meant to be a warning to the second party that they may come only so close." The misunderstandings he so expertly highlights as the conversation unfolds are gender based and have beautifully messy consequences. Ray Porter thinks he has been clear, direct and expressed his desire to be nobody's boyfriend. Mirabelle feels that he is "bordering on falling in love with her...that after he cuts down on traveling, they will see if they should get married or just go steady." The scene reads like a film, and it is this visual quality that pervades and adds beauty to this ironic and sensitive story. Right from the start I knew I'd love this book, because I dreaded it ending. I enjoyed every morsel of Shopgirl.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, intimate tale
Review: A lovely, touching story of a young girl struggling through her days. It's all exactly right -- the loneliness, the depression, the desire to be an 'artist', the men who matter but don't, the distant family dysfunction, the inability to plan and move forward, the waiting for things to happen. Excellent reading -- I started and could not put it down until I was finished.
Rating: 
Summary: A Nice, Light Read With, Perhaps, Some Light Wisdom.
Review: A nice, enjoyable little story. Good characterizations, I thought...especially given it's short length. It is easy to imagine Steve Martin as the storyteller...the turns of phrase are what you would expect of him. Mirabelle, the main character, is a wistful young woman finding her way through life. As we empathize with her we may find some small wisdom of our own.
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