Shopgirl

October 9, 2000
Movie star Martin shone in the comic essays of last year's Pure Drivel--but can he write serious fiction? His debut novella gives fans a chance to find out. Shy, depressed, young, lonely and usually broke, Vermont-bred Mirabelle Butterfield sells gloves at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus (nobody ever buys); at night, she watches TV with her two cats. Martin's slight plot follows Mirabelle's search for love--or at least romance and companionship--with middle-aged Ray Porter, a womanizing Seattle millionaire who may, or may not, have hidden redeeming qualities. Also in and out of Mirabelle's life are a handful of supporting characters, all of them lonely and alienated, too. There's her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam vet; the laconic, unambitious Jeremy; and Mirabelle's promiscuous, body-obsessed co-worker Lisa. Detractors may call Martin's plot predictable, his characters stereotypes. Admirers may answer that--as in Douglas Coupland--these aren't stereotypes but modern archetypes, whose lives must be streamlined if they are to represent ours. Except for its love-hate relations with L.A., little about this book sounds much like Martin; its anxious, sometimes flat prose style can be affecting or disorienting, and belongs somewhere between Coupland and literary chroniclers of depression like Lydia Davis. Martin's first novel is finally neither a triumph nor a disaster: it's yet another of this intelligent performer's attempts to expand his range, and those who will buy it for the name on the cover could do a lot worse.

July 1, 2000
Mirabelle, the image of fragile, feminine loveliness, is the shopgirl. She works in the glove department at Neiman's in L.A., where she's come to escape the provincialism of her Vermont hometown. And though she may remind people of Olive Oyl, once the resemblance is noted, many readers also will find a likeness to Chaplin's little tramp, the poor, lonely soul with a heart of gold. But Mirabelle is not just a shopgirl; she spends her nights toiling as an artist. Her specialty is creating a striking image surrounded by a black background. Mirabelle lives with two cats; one is always hiding. She has a few friends, who invariably forget to include her in their social activities, and she can barely claim the interest of Jeremy, an awkward, inexperienced young man without means, whom she met in a laundromat. Then, abruptly and mysteriously, Mr. Ray Porter, a millionaire, comes into her life. They becomes lovers, and that initiates the ire of Mirabelle's antagonist, Lisa Cramer. Cramer's aim in life is to be flawlessly pleasing to men, to which end she has viewed a few "educational' porno tapes," discussed techniques extensively with other women, and "once attended a class given by Crystal Headly, a down and going sex-film actress." The action moves quickly, yet the narrative takes its time to develop, which is a very skillful bit of writing business. Martin's literary fable of a novella is disarming, particularly for those who come to it expecting the biting, zany humor of "Pure Drivel" (1998), but it may mark a new direction in a noteworthy writer's career. ((Reviewed July 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)