Shopgirl (2000) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Mirabelle: Main character. Sweet but strange.
• Ray Porter: Wealthy businessman twice Mirabelle's age
• Jeremy: Slacker who pursues Mirabelle
• Lisa Cramer: A promiscuous LA woman who also works a Neinmans. Intent on proving her worth through capturing male desire. Accompanying character to Mirabelle.
• Loki: Add a description of this character.
• Del Rey
• Ken: Mirabelle's brother
• Catherine: Mirabelle's mother
• Dan: Mirabelle's father

Quotes edit see section history

• “Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him.”

• “There is nothing too mysterious about Ray Porter, at least in the usual sense of the word. He is single, he is kind, he tries to do the right thing, and he does not understand himself, or women, or his relationships with women. But there is one truth about him that can be said of a man who asks a woman to dinner before he has exchanged one personal word with her. Mr. Ray Porter is on the prowl.”

• “At breakfast, early because she has to get to work, Mirabelle becomes age seven. She sits waiting to be served. Ray Porter gets the juice, makes the coffee, sets the plates, toasts the bread, and pours the cereal. He gets the paper. Mirabelle is so dependent, she could have used a nanny to open her mouth and spoon-feed her the oat bran. She speaks in one-word sentence, which requires Ray to fill the silences with innocuous queries, like an adult trying to break through to a disinterested teenager. In this snapshot of their morning is hidden the definition of their coming relationship, which Ray Porter will come to understand almost two years later.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “…just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives.”

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• how is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?

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• He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.

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• But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn’t understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.

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• He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked.

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• Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some nights these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.

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• Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.

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• At thirty-two, Lisa does not know about forty, and she is unprepared for the time when she will actually have to know something in order to have people listen to her.

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• “Oh, no…don’t,” she corrects him: “it’s pain that changes our lives.”

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• Mirabelle is not sophisticated enough to understand what is happening to her, and Ray Porter is not sophisticated enough to know what he is doing to her. She is falling in love, and she fully expects her love to be returned once Mr. Porter comes to his senses. But right now, he is using the hours with her as a portal to his own need for propinquity.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Steve Martin (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy › Anthologies
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Shopgirl (IMDb)