I zipped through Steve Martin’s – yes, that very same Steve Martin you’re thinking of – novella Shopgirl over the quiet afternoons of a weekend in December. A melancholic story set in Los Angeles of a lonely shopgirl in her late twenties, Mirabelle, and the two men who enter her life as romantic partners; Ray Porter, an older millionaire, and Jeremy, a younger slacker. Mirabelle works the glove counter at department store Neiman Marcus, and spends her evenings alone, chatting to her two cats and working on her art. Martin manages to capture the absolute tedium that often comes with working in retail. The style of third person omniscient narration used here can come across as condescendingly smug and often that creeps into Martin’s technique. For the most part, however, through his sparse writing, lack of significant dialogue and focus on the contradictions of internal thought processes Martin creates realistically flawed characters.

Weeks later, Mirabelle doesn’t know if she is feeling better naturally or because the Celexa is working. It feels like a natural lift, and she wonders if she needs the pills at all. But she isn’t stupid, and she recalls hearing that this is a common feeling, so she keeps taking the pills daily.

Mirabelle’s attempts to cope with her initial emotional isolation and her repeated bouts of significant depressive episodes are never overly exaggerated or stylized. Abstaining from the usual wailing histrionics in the description of Mirabelle’s depression elicits as much sympathy for her plight. These characters make mistakes, are ignorant to the motivations of others and yet not condemned for it. Such errors and flaws, and the subsequent lessons learned, give the characters more complexity than the slight narrative should allow. An unexpectedly affecting novella.