June 20, 2022
Martin’s youthful, character-driven latest (after Caca Dolce) digs into imposter syndrome and class differences among a crew of San Francisco art students. Joelle Berry, a sophomore, has decided to create a remake of the film Rushmore, despite having never seen it. Meanwhile, her emotionally abusive mother and crack-addicted sister attempt to drag Joelle back into their problems. Her new friend Suz is a font of consolation and networking opportunities, but Joelle can’t relate to the ease of Suz’s more privileged life, or the surety with which Suz treats her place in the world. As the school year progresses, Joelle struggles to find confidence. With a series of short, one-to-five-page scenes spliced by Joelle’s Google searches and handwritten journal entries, Martin captures her protagonist’s youthful insecurity and desire for creative direction. Though the momentum can sometimes feel as stalled as Joelle’s development, Martin’s humor shines with Joelle’s Rushmore drafts, which cleverly reflect her anxiety: “Jason Schwartzman: When you knew me in the future, was I still living in Sacramento? Older woman: Yes. Jason Schwartzman, destroying his apartment in a rage: That’s so fucked up! I’m supposed to move to LA! The whole plan is to move to LA! This blows!” Despite the fits and starts, Martin’s writing holds the reader’s attention. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House.
Starred review from August 15, 2022
An art student wrestles with creative and family trouble in this empathetic novel. Martin's latest novel accomplishes an impressive feat of misdirection. It follows several months in the life of Joey, an art student living in San Francisco who's in regular contact with her family in Lodi, California. At first glance, the book can seem like a series of episodes about art school life--beginning with the first line, in which Joey mentions a certain Wes Anderson movie that she's using as the basis for her own project in a film class: "I hadn't seen Rushmore. That was the premise." Joey's narrative is interspersed with things like Craigslist posts, Google searches, and Venn diagrams. In the wrong hands, all this could feel overly twee, but Martin counterbalances Joey's art school days with updates from her mother in Lodi. Most of these updates are about Joey's sister, Jenny, who has struggled with addiction and whose young child creates a wedge within the family. Or, as Joey says about a tense moment between her and her mother, "We hadn't talked since a few days before when I refused to quit college to watch my nephew while my sister screwed someone from GameStop." The familial and economic pressures Joey finds herself under put her in a constant state of thinking about money and the ways she should or should not be spending it: "We walked three blocks to Blue Bottle Coffee. I reasoned it would be okay to spend $2.25 on a small cup this one time." While the allusions to Rushmore persist, the art school comedy of manners gives way to a deeper story about navigating disparate worlds and struggling with situations without easy answers. An unconventional and subtly powerful coming-of-age story.
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