Scan barcode
A review by aurigae
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
3.0
This novel is sort of like Breakfast at Tiffany's as told by Nick Carraway: a detached fable of a brilliant, beautiful, semi-tragic woman who gallivants around the New York of a particular era on the strength of her luck, wits, and sex appeal, and with whom the narrator is sort a noncommittally in love.
It all goes down easy enough, but it takes two hundred pages for any shred of a plot to become visible, and even by the end it's unclear what was at stake - and, more importantly, for whom. One of the more important questions about a novel like this is, whose story is it? The narrator tells us it's the story of the beautiful woman, but he doesn't know her enough for that to be true. If it were a true Gatsby update, it would be the story of the narrator, the modern-day Nick Carraway, but that rings false, because the character neither invests in the story nor evolves.
My conclusion, then, is that the main character of this story, the character whose trials and triumphs we are meant to care about and whose evolution is meant to give the story depth, is the New York art world, or perhaps art in general. The only really interesting line in the book is about art, said to the book's Golightly character by a gentleman caller about a painting she has hung in her bedroom:
"The water, to me, represents the earth and all the things that happen on the earth, reality. And the moonlight represents our dreams and our minds. And the reflection... well, I guess the reflection represents art. It's what lies between our dreams and reality."
I would like to say that quote is representative of the book, that there is something deep and thoughtful to be gained by reading it. But really it's an urban fable of the power of cunning and feminine wiles and the limitations of the power, and it remains resolutely earthbound through the remainder of its three hundred pages.
It all goes down easy enough, but it takes two hundred pages for any shred of a plot to become visible, and even by the end it's unclear what was at stake - and, more importantly, for whom. One of the more important questions about a novel like this is, whose story is it? The narrator tells us it's the story of the beautiful woman, but he doesn't know her enough for that to be true. If it were a true Gatsby update, it would be the story of the narrator, the modern-day Nick Carraway, but that rings false, because the character neither invests in the story nor evolves.
My conclusion, then, is that the main character of this story, the character whose trials and triumphs we are meant to care about and whose evolution is meant to give the story depth, is the New York art world, or perhaps art in general. The only really interesting line in the book is about art, said to the book's Golightly character by a gentleman caller about a painting she has hung in her bedroom:
"The water, to me, represents the earth and all the things that happen on the earth, reality. And the moonlight represents our dreams and our minds. And the reflection... well, I guess the reflection represents art. It's what lies between our dreams and reality."
I would like to say that quote is representative of the book, that there is something deep and thoughtful to be gained by reading it. But really it's an urban fable of the power of cunning and feminine wiles and the limitations of the power, and it remains resolutely earthbound through the remainder of its three hundred pages.