An Object of Beauty

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before (in addition to the above) and blog about them. (30/30)

Completed!

An Object of Beauty
by Steve Martin (yes, the Steve Martin)

I finally finished reading Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. I started it ages ago but it kept falling by the wayside due to Nate and grad school and, oh, that job thing I have.

The length of time it took me to finish this book does not speak to how much I adore Steve Martin's writing, however. His novella Shopgirl continues to be one of my very favorite contemporary books. (The film is also really good and it's very interesting to compare the two. I always recommend reading the book first.)

Not everyone knows this, but Steve Martin is an avid art collector and incredibly knowledgeable about the art world, so when I read that he wrote a new novel and it centered around the art world, I knew it would be something special. The story is beautiful written with incredibly well developed characters and an adequate amount of sideways movement to the plot, by which I mean that the plot continually seems to take these small trips aside from the main point. This plot construction is so well written that I kept forgetting that the side details weren't the main point of the story (although they're always key parts of the main point of the story).

This book is a beautiful ride through two decades of the art world, full of interesting characters and details about great (or even not great) works of art.

If you've read any of Steve Martin's writing before and you haven't read this one, you should. If you haven't read any of Steve Martin's writing before, start with Shopgirl... then read this.