Book: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Yes, that Steve Martin

This is a novel about the art world and connivings and characters who work in museums, galleries and auction houses.

Lacey is beautiful, ambitious and not overly concerned bothered by scruples. She is also lucky, most of the time.

"On the way back to the Carlyle, his mental reenactment of their last kiss told him, yes, she loves me, and he once again saw Lacey as an illuminating white light, forgetting that white is composed of disparate streaks of color, each as powerful as the whole."

I liked the Manhattan buzz and insights into the world of art.

"The publicity that convinced broke home owners that they could make nice profits flipping their houses was the same as that which motivated moneyed art collections to go further into the market than was practical. The lure in art collection and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust if paper money: it makes no sense when you really think about it. New artistic images are so vulnerable to opinion that it wouldn't take much more than a whim for a small group of collectors to decide that a contemporary artist was not so wonderful anymore, was so last year. In the ebb and flow of artists' desirability, some collectors wondered how a beautiful painting, once it had fallen from favor, could turn ugly so quickly."

Entertaining....