Becky's Great Book Reviews Shopgirls by Jessica Anya Blau

Jessica Anya Blau's Shopgirls is a feel-good, light-hearted breeze of a novel. So fun to read!

Zippy Tremblay is a nineteen-year-old working at department store I. Magnin in 1985 San Francisco. Struggling to make ends meet, she rotates between four Salvation Army outfits, shares an apartment with her best friend and hustles every day on the sales floor. When her mother's husband accidentally cuts off his own fingers with a buzzsaw and it falls to Zippy to help them out financially, she considers leaving her job to work with her mom at a hardware store where she'll earn more.

There's only one problem: she loves her job selling clothes! At one point Zippy likens clothing to magic: "like fresh white snow on a gritty dirt road, they transform the mundane into the spectacular".

Peppered with 80s-esque characters and references, the pages of Shopgirls are filled with witty dialogue and absurdist humor. Zippy's observations ("the cosmetic artists were always direct and open about their sex lives") bump up against wacky situations like when another salesgirl employs Zippy to pray on her knees with her in the dressing room for more customers.

Throughout the novel Zippy keeps thinking that she would like to be the chooser in her own life. When a first-time meeting with her biological father turns out to be revelatory and then she gets an interview for a dream job, she starts to feel like her life as a lost puzzle piece "sliding around a huge table with a mishmash of other loose pieces" is starting to snap into place.

Ultimately, reading Shopgirls feels like when you're listening to your funny best friend gossip about her workplace. Jessica Anya Blau's candid yet playful writing was pure entertainment. I give Shopgirls four stars out of five.