Shopgirl by Steve Martin

A few pages into this book I thought to myself "hmmm, this smacks of someone already  famous getting a book deal based on their established famousness." I retain that opinion. 

     

     In the beginning I couldn't decide if the completely saturating pretension was supposed to be satirical. It's not. Except for with Lisa. Who happens to be my favorite character. In a love-to-hate sort of way. All of the characters in this book are incredibly self involved. They treat others as lesser and go along making excuses for why their behavior is justified. Meanwhile Lisa is horrible, quite possibly the most horrible. But she owns it. And there's something to be said for that. 

     The writing comes off as heavy handed. Whenever a clever line or description came up I found myself envisioning Steve Martin at his desk thinking to himself "brilliant! Oh Steve Martin you are a gift to the written word!" But that's probably just me. 

     I also thought the writing was lazy. The ending? What's that about? Not a single bit of it is fleshed out. The same with the Dad's Vietnam bit. It seems like The author got bored and dropped it. 

     I read this for book club. Which explains why I forged ahead despite hating it so hard. A fellow book club member said, "I'm pretty sure Steve Martin wrote this so it could be made into a movie, which he stars in and gets to repeatedly get it on with Claire Danes." Agreed. The book is supposedly semi-autobiographical. Steve Martin is supposed to be the young guy who winds up getting his act together. But we all know he's the insensitive, rich, skeevy old guy. And we know this because all sorts of lame excuses are made for Ray, the old guy. Like, Ray didn't know he was hurting Mirabelle because he didn't know himself well enough. Time to hurry up Ray, you're over 50. As I said, Lame excuses. 

     The excessive use of the F word is more evidence of Lazy writing. Get a thesaurus Steve Martin. It started to remind me of a sociology professor I had in college that would show porn for the shock value and the reputation it earned him as "the cool teacher." 

     There is this to say positively, there were some astute observations of human behavior. Particularly the ease and complexity of miscommunication in relationships. It was clear that the author spent a lot of time thinking on it. I can appreciate that. 

     In conclusion I really hated this book. Which is unfortunate because I enjoy Steve Martin. Though, admittedly, only to a point. If I could give Shopgirl zero stars I would. Just skip it. If you want to read something about human behavior and relationships that is less than 200 pages (and also awesome!) read Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill instead. 

Neverhome by Laird Hunt

I've always thought it goofy when people say they read a book and then love it so much they immediately flip back to the first page and read it again. Goofy is the wrong word here. Stupid is what I actually mean. I think it's stupid and I hate it. There are so many books in the world! I understand reading the same book twice. Like a year or ten later but back to back? No. Believe me when I say I cannot describe how ludicrous I think this is. 

   

     So, I'm about to eat crow. I would totally do an immediate reread of Neverhome. This is huge. But seriously, this book is sheer brilliance. It is gentle and violent in synchronized turns. The main plot alone is enough reason to read this book. But add to that the wealth of other stories going on around it. It's as though Laird Hunt had 100 story ideas and instead of writing them all he fleshed out one and mixed in the rest for good measure. And he did so masterfully. The reader never feels inundated with names and places and who what where when blah! Yet there's so much going on! And it is seamless. 

     

     The writing is exquisite. Which sounds really pretentious but trust me on this. It's creative and inventive and different but never overwrought. While reading this book I never got the sense that I was back in a college writing workshop sitting across from someone who had written yet another essay about their angst, or how their saxophone is like the wind. The author never came across as trying too hard.  When people try new things with language that is hard to pull off! At least to me. I have a very low cheese tolerance. 

     There's this scene in the book where the main character describes her mother and the author builds a scene in which the mother is getting out of the tub and she has springs for legs. It sounds kooky and too...far out when I describe it. But it's actually weird and genius AND still accessible and dammit if it doesn't work. Like work, WORK. 

     I've tried thinking of other books I've read that manage what Neverhome does and I am hard pressed. Some of Annie Dillard's later books manage to be creative yet not flowery or floofy or gaggy sentimental. And plenty of other books manage to be intense page-turners. Laird Hunt marries the two in Neverhome. It's simply the best. I really wish more people had it on their radar so we could discuss it to an unhealthy extent. So read it.