Do you feel like you're the only one who doesn't have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Actor and writer Steve Martin makes readers laugh at his take on the problem in his second zany novel, \The Pleasure of My Company."" The story will make the most downtrodden, single college student share laughs and provide hope for the uncertain future.
While living in suburban Santa Monica, 33-year-old Daniel Pecan Cambridge has an IQ of 190 and an obsessive-compulsive disorder that makes him fear streetside curbs, iron his pillows and insist that his apartment's light bulbs total exactly 1125 watts when lit. Despite his limitations, his infatuations with three different women bring him out of his shell and into a new life. The combination of great imagery, Daniel's unusual deductions and a clear unfolding of Daniel's character make this an entertaining read.
The book has a very vivid language as Martin describes people and places. Daniel's thoughts about one of his crushes, Clarissa: ""It is as though her lightness pulls her toward the heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound."" The way he describes the cute Rite-aid pharmacist Zandy: ""Her hair is almost unkempt, with so many dangling swoops and curls that I long for a tiny surfboard so I can go swishing amid the tresses."" ??
There is only one part of the book where one notices that he feels lonely as he tries to break out of his own boundaries. ""I did not know what made me know what was inside me or how I could redeem what was hidden there. There must be a key or person ... that could access it ... I closed the evening with this desolate thought: There are few takers for the quiet heart.""
But this is not a sad, pitiful book-it's damn funny. Martin proves a funny book can still have substance and by the end, the reader sees how the character has changed when he learns that ""...I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside . . . there were still many takers for the quiet heart."" To get there, Daniel enters the ""Most Average American Award,"" goes on a road trip, builds stress-releasing ""magic squares,"" discovers how his father felt about him, and appears on ""Crime Show"" as a mistaken murder suspect.
It's the kind of book that brings a nice, warm fuzzy feeling by the end.
