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'Shopgirl' by Steve Martin

Books in Brief

Thursday, November 09, 2000

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

	Shopgirl By Steve Martin Hyperion $17.95

In midlife, this actor continues to be afforded the luxury of dabbling in commercial writing -- a play, short humor pieces for magazines and now this slight novel.

The title character is Mirabelle, an attractive depressive who sells gloves at Nieman Marcus in Beverly Hills and dabbles -- like the author -- at art.

In a style that could best be described as a limp monotone, Martin describes her daily routine, which includes several low-wattage relationships. Here’s how a dinner date goes:

“She made jokes, she had been wry, she had been pretty for him. She had turned him on. She had listened. And in return, he had put his hand on the small of her back and paid for her parking and bought her dinner.”

Not exactly heart-pounding action.

“Shopgirl” is not so much a novel, but a “treatment,” a Hollywood term for the loose outlines of a story for those in the movie business who get headaches when they read.