Shannon's Reviews > Shopgirl
Shopgirl
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Edit: 欧宝娱乐 just showed me the following quote from Steve Martin: 鈥淪ome people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.鈥� Heh. I'm gonna go ahead and add that to my review here. Also, I am totes against GIFs/pics in goodreads reviews usually (because USE YOUR WORDS) but I will make an exception (b/c RuPaul and Visage):
OH, what an utterly FASCINATING look into the totally important and equally fascinating stereotypes regarding heterosexual sexual relationships. Everyone in this book could have died in a fire, and I wouldn't have cared. The girl, I hate her. I refuse to believe this girl is smart, everything she does indicates that she is a complete idiot. But the reader is supposed to accept that she is smart because Steve Martin cleverly includes this in the narration by saying something like "She is smart. She reads books". WOW, NEAT. AND SUBTLE! Plus everyone in this book is really shallow and vapid and obsessed with clothes, which I think is contradictory to the claim of any of these people being intelligent at all. Am I saying that people really interested in fashion can't be intelligent? YES, PRETTY MUCH. The narration is ridiculous. BOO.
Also: this book is about a 50 year old rich white guy fucking a young hot 28 year old. And they made a movie out of it and of course, STEVE MARTIN played the 50 yr old. YOUR PLOY IS TRANSPARENT, MARTIN. I haven't seen the movie, but I actually kind of want to. If this story could ever work, I could see it working as a movie. NOT AS A BOOK, Martin isn't a good enough writer to pull it off.

OH, what an utterly FASCINATING look into the totally important and equally fascinating stereotypes regarding heterosexual sexual relationships. Everyone in this book could have died in a fire, and I wouldn't have cared. The girl, I hate her. I refuse to believe this girl is smart, everything she does indicates that she is a complete idiot. But the reader is supposed to accept that she is smart because Steve Martin cleverly includes this in the narration by saying something like "She is smart. She reads books". WOW, NEAT. AND SUBTLE! Plus everyone in this book is really shallow and vapid and obsessed with clothes, which I think is contradictory to the claim of any of these people being intelligent at all. Am I saying that people really interested in fashion can't be intelligent? YES, PRETTY MUCH. The narration is ridiculous. BOO.
Also: this book is about a 50 year old rich white guy fucking a young hot 28 year old. And they made a movie out of it and of course, STEVE MARTIN played the 50 yr old. YOUR PLOY IS TRANSPARENT, MARTIN. I haven't seen the movie, but I actually kind of want to. If this story could ever work, I could see it working as a movie. NOT AS A BOOK, Martin isn't a good enough writer to pull it off.
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Reading Progress
January 13, 2008
– Shelved
January 13, 2008
– Shelved as:
own
Started Reading
February 25, 2008
–
Finished Reading
February 26, 2008
– Shelved as:
festival-of-suck
February 23, 2012
– Shelved as:
books-by-celebrities
Comments Showing 1-29 of 29 (29 new)
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message 1:
by
Mick
(new)
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rated it 1 star
Mar 07, 2008 05:07PM

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I watched the movie first, though, and I'll say this - it seems as though the director took this bit of vulgar tripe and somehow turned it into something moderately deep, meaningful, and kind of beautiful.
I think you'd like the characters much better in the movie because they were more fleshed out (especially Jeremy), like real people, and the acting was wonderfully subtle. I didn't care as much for the movie the first time I watched it, several years ago, but watching it again recently, I loved it.
I thought the book was more or less garbage, but it apparently paved the way for a really good movie.
I say give it a try; even though apparently Steve Martin also wrote the screenplay, the director clearly took some matters into his own hands and it was nowhere near as about male fantasy/dirty old men/shallow dumb people as the book. :)

"She is smart. She reads books".



This is more obvious when you hear Steve Martin read it aloud, as I did, in the audiobook version.
Summary: Mirabelle Buttersfield is a silly girl but not as silly as Steve Martin for saying she's not silly.




Moreover, Steve Martin's anything but pretentious, Patrick. He keeps his voice very simple, actually--as mocked in the example of "She's smart. She reads books." etc--and that's part of what I loved about it. The simplicity allows a vulnerable honesty I very much appreciated. In that way, I do not believe the movie will be as good, because his voice was so much of what iliked about it, but I look forward to seeing it, nonetheless.
That being said, the book was by no means perfect. Jeremy's transition into her Mr. Right at the end didn't quite do it for me. It seemed a bit forced. He still seemed like a phony. But it was still a great read.

Also, being "simple" in tone does not mean something can't also be pretentious drivel.
I thought it was very bad. You didn't think so. Okay. Obviously a lot of people's perception of books has to do with their taste, and I'm fine with people enjoying this, or enjoying anything I don't enjoy. Buuuut, nothing about this book is "great" by any stretch of the imagination. That is absolutely a misuse of the word "great". There are many great books and things in the world. This doesn't qualify.

In the case of Shopgirl, it is pretentious because it acts as if the simplicity will lead to something meaningful, but it does not. Peanuts (the comic strip) was able to use simplicity to talk about big issues, but Shopgirl uses simplicity to remove the meaning from the big issues, while wishing it were making an insightful point about them instead.
EDIT: Wow, this review was written in 2008 and we're still discussing? 欧宝娱乐 is a funny place. (I like that things tend to go this way.)

And also I just updated my review now and responded to your comment 3 years later. IT NEVER ENDS. GOODREADS 4 LIFE.

Then goes on to mention the man is white. Like that matters in the plot! Surely, I鈥檓 mistaken...

