I admit I bought Shopgirl on the basis of Steve Martin's celebrity, because of the brilliance he's shown in some of his comedy. But I started to get restless about ten pages in, then forced myself to read it in one sitting. This book is all description, no plot. It suffers from LA hipness (the plunking down of the "f" word often enough to remind those of us who are not from Hollywood that we must read this word and read it often in order to be cool) and it never rises above a one-dimensional treatment of any of its dull, flat characters. This is an "Emperor's New Clothes" book: lots of praise because of who the author is, not because of what he's really accomplished here.