Shopgirls, Jessica Anya Blau's new novel about entering adulthood in 1980s San Francisco, is told through the peppy perspective of Zippy, a 19-year-old attempting her first foray into independence. Zippy was raised by a single mom in "an apartment above a liquor store"—that classic indicator of blue-collar status. As the book opens, she has just started her first post–high school job in the dress department of I. Magnin, a San Francisco department store that served generations of affluent shoppers until closing in 1995.
It's an underpaid commission gig, but Zippy is delighted by the proximity to fashion, luxury, and a crash course in heterosexual womanhood. Each morning, she stops on the cosmetics floor where a colleague applies makeup while doling out life advice, which Zippy dutifully collects in a notebook. Then she proceeds to her own department, where she narrates the quirks and foibles of the colleagues and customers she encounters, noting which of their aspects might belong in the adult persona she is consciously creating. Her colleague Miss Yolanda, for example, is brusque and hypercritical, but Zippy emulates her skill and knowledge as a seasoned salesperson.
After work, Zippy continues studying adulthood under the tutelage of her roommate, Raquel, a lawyer who puts them both on an alternate-day fasting diet, sneaks Zippy into bars, and encourages her to give up her virginity ASAP.
The one shadow dimming Zippy's sparkle is her lack of knowledge about her father; she was the fruit of a youthful one-night stand. When he reappears, Zippy discovers that adulthood is more nuanced than anticipated. Since Shopgirls is a first-person narrative, readers walk beside Zippy on her journey from naive to clear-eyed.
This novel is a charming tale of growing up just before AIDS stole San Francisco's own innocence. Some things haven't changed: finding a decent parking space there today remains an event worth "skipp[ing] the regular grocery shop … so as not to lose it." Beyond a dead-on sense of place, Blau's creative descriptions include such memorable characters as the old woman on the bus "whose body folded like layered doughnuts." Zippy easily finds mentors because she is delightful company.
Posted in Arts+Culture
