An Object of Beauty

by Steve Martin

Grand Central Publishing, 2010. 295 pages.

It's rarely a good thing when a novel's strongest feature is it's opening line: "I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yaeger" writes narrator Daniel Franks and he goes on to confess that until he writes down Lacey's story he will be "unable to write about anything else." It's a good hook with tremendous promise but Mr. Martin fails to meet his own expectations.


"Beauty" is Mr. Martin's third work of fiction. He's become a ubiquitous entertainer in recent years and it is enviable the way he continues to reinvent himself. Once he was just a stand-up comic and an actor in low-grade family films (see "Cheaper by the Dozen" or rather don't); now he's also a novelist, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and, amazingly, award-winning banjo player. In "Beauty", Mr. Martin reveals yet another talent he probably made a Faustian deal to acquire: he is a lover of fine art.

Set in New York's art world from the early 90s until present day, "Beauty" tells the story of Lacey Yaeger, a young woman who will do anything to claw her way to the top. Mr. Martin goes to great lengths to bring us deep into the art world and in this he succeeds admirably. An avid art collector, he is clearly in his element and succeeds in painting a tense and glittering world where doors open and close in accordance with its own customs and taboos.

But no book can survive on the setting alone; in the end, it's the characters who count. Like's any first person novel, "Beauty"'s main character is its narrator. The narrator's voice persists throughout so that he remains present even if he is not in action. Normally this would afford the reader an intimate glimpse into the narrator's mind, yet in this case, the narrator writes with a journalist's detachment. Lest the reader wonder how he knows so many intimate details about Lacey's life, he gives a caveat: he is working from memory, research, gossip and, finally, imagination. This is a clever conceit that could potentially subvert the recent spate of creative memoirs that have clogged our bookshelves. Everyone is telling their life story these days and almost all of them are making at least part of it up. Is it ever possible to truly discuss anyone's life without relying even a little on imagination? Intriguing questions, but sadly Mr. Martin has other themes in mind.

His narrator's absence from the action ultimately means that we cease to care about him and are no longer interested when he finally becomes involved. Consequently, at the climactic moment when we learn just why Daniel Franks is so obsessed with telling Lacey's story, the tragedy is muted. The purpose of the book, as we know from the opening line, is not to simply tell the story of Lacey Yaeger, but to tell how she has affected the narrator Daniel Franks. Yet the two of them only rarely appear together and because of this, the novel lacks a strong central relationship. It should be Lacey and Daniel, but he is so absent that we are left with Lacey and her ever-changing band of lovers.

"Beauty" is not necessarily a bad book: it is well-written and even shows some occasional wit. Still, it might have been a stronger piece had it been a novella, for it feels slightly bloated in its current form. But don't despair if it's already on your bookshelf: it will be a tolerable companion should you need to survive a trans-Atlantic flight.