‘A delicate, poignant modern romance about a shy shopgirl’ Richard Corliss
Mirabelle Buttersfield spends her days selling expensive evening gloves in Beverly Hills’ finest store, and her nights watching television and drawing darkly gothic pictures.
Adrift in the world and lonely, she has few customers, so spends most of her time leaning on the counter staring into space. But then two men enter her life: Jeremy, a roadie for a band, and Mr Ray Porter, a middle-aged millionaire who invites her out to dinner.
Funny, tender, and insightful, Shop Girl is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of LA’s false noses and falser people – from one of our best loved comic writers.
Mirabelle Buttersfield spends her days selling expensive evening gloves in Beverly Hills’ finest store, and her nights watching television and drawing darkly gothic pictures.
Adrift in the world and lonely, she has few customers, so spends most of her time leaning on the counter staring into space. But then two men enter her life: Jeremy, a roadie for a band, and Mr Ray Porter, a middle-aged millionaire who invites her out to dinner.
Funny, tender, and insightful, Shop Girl is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of LA’s false noses and falser people – from one of our best loved comic writers.
Reviews
A tender love story
It's the signature combination of exhilaration and vulnerability that Martin offers us with extraordinary confidence
The book is like one of Mirabelle's sketches: small, deft, pensive, poignant - a moving still life
Wryly omniscient, ruthlessly truthful, [Martin] calls to mind Austen with an up-to-date, masculine spin
It's the signature combination of exhilaration and vulnerability that Martin offers us with extraordinary confidence
His prose is almost Zen-like and his revelations superb
A tender love story
His prose is almost Zen-like and his revelations superb
Shopgirl is an Audrey Hepburn of a book: slim, lovely, and ever so old-fashioned
Shopgirl has some of Chekhov's autumn light about it: a story remembering all the really fine recent things
Shopgirl reads as smoothly and pleasurably as the novels of the late W.M. Spackman
A delicate, poignant modern romance about a shy shopgirl
Shopgirl is an Audrey Hepburn of a book: slim, lovely, and ever so old-fashioned
Shopgirl has some of Chekhov's autumn light about it: a story remembering all the really fine recent things
A delicate, poignant modern romance about a shy shopgirl
The book is like one of Mirabelle's sketches: small, deft, pensive, poignant -- a moving still life
Wryly omniscient, ruthlessly truthful, [Martin] calls to mind Austen with an up-to-date, masculine spin
Shopgirl reads as smoothly and pleasurably as the novels of the late W.M. Spackman
Is there no end to Steve Martin's talents? ... he has shown himself in recent years to be an accomplished writer, not least with this slickly written short novel... Martin's writing has real charm