This cramped time frame lends the novel a richly claustrophobic atmosphere ... Joey will be relatable to readers who’ve visited art galleries and felt too afraid to ask whether the fire extinguisher is part of the exhibit or just a random object in the building ... Martin excels at seeing beauty in the mundane ... What makes Joey’s journey immensely readable is Martin’s obvious empathy for her protagonist and for the act of creation.

The book’s charms are also its nuisances; loving this book depends on one’s tolerance for spending 350 pages with an aimless 20-something art school dilettante. Joey’s upbringing hasn’t allowed for the luxury of self-development, so at times it was frustrating to inhabit the mind of a character with little sense of self, but her humor and wide-eyed disposition help carry the plot. Reading this book mimics the conundrum of 'wasting' your youth: It’s fun in the moment, but when you look back and wonder if you could’ve been doing something more significant, you realize it might have been precisely what you needed ... It’s the larger feminist question ungirding these pages that gives the book its weight: What do women owe their families? And what happens when they cut those ties to become artists? ... Even though Joey doesn’t end up making any great art, her path is a reminder that pursuing one’s vision of an artistic life is its own reward, and a messy personal life is often part and parcel of the art journey.

You could toss off a description of the book as 'the portrait of the artist as a young woman,' but life is short and that’s awfully reductive. Martin’s book is too complicated, too messy, too specifically entangled with the sheer impossibility of art for art’s sake under capitalism, for that kind of catalog copy to apply ... Readers might find something of an even more youthful Sally Rooney in these things. But their patience will be tested ... It’s a feather in Martin’s cap that her humor and nuance keep the reader going ... There is more to this 'portrait of the artist' than meets the eye, luckily. Superseding the struggle to complete a project premised on the unknown is the struggle simply to survive ... A direct rebuttal to the notion that novelists must ignore precarity if they want to be marketable ... Joey’s story unfolds through short vignettes. Some pages are only a few lines long. Others include lists and venn diagrams ... If Martin has set out to complete a 'self-portrait' of what it means to be a young person today in graduate school with artistic aspirations, she has done so.

Deploying her signature sarcasm and wit, Martin utilizes what author Sharma Shields calls the 'portrait of the artist as a work in progress' to frame a host of interpersonal dilemmas that extend beyond the frame of Joey’s affluent San Francisco art school ... Through a succession of fast-paced, interlaced plot threads, we watch our narrator outgrow—in fits and starts—her family’s codependency and her peers’ superficial artspeak. This growth is nonlinear; it oscillates, just as time in each modular section of the book shuttles between past and present. The effect is one of vertigo and fragmentation ... Erratic gestures toward broader critical discourse are made throughout the book, but ultimately, due to Joey’s narrow point of view, the novel focuses more on individual works of art in the context of Joey’s art school than it does on contemporary art in any larger context. Even the city of San Francisco is depicted in broad strokes, owing to the narrator’s tendency to live inside her head. Discussions of contemporary art—that is, discussions with a foot in reality—are largely stilted and superficial ... It seems...a lost opportunity to have such a sharp and opinionated narrator withhold, elide, or halfheartedly allude to her thoughts on art, rather than state them frankly on the page ... Conflict does not come to a head, nor does Joey experience a moment of revelation. Instead, anger fizzles out, and dissatisfying social interactions repeat themselves. As a result, the narrator’s interiority does little to drive the plot, and the novel’s first 200 pages or so read as exposition ... In a way, Joey presents the same frustrating enigma that bad art does. Art, for instance, is criticized for being too opaque as much as it is for being too transparent. Likewise, Joey gives the reader at once very little introspection and a barrage of unfiltered confessions.

Stellar ... Tell Me I’m an Artist gains emotional heft through the underlying plot line involving Joey’s sister, who runs away yet again while Joey is at school ... Martin clearly understands one of the most painful truths about living a creative life: Talking about making something, whether it be a Rushmore remake or a book review, is a lot easier than creating the thing itself.

With a series of short, one-to-five-page scenes spliced by Joelle’s Google searches and handwritten journal entries, Martin captures her protagonist’s youthful insecurity and desire for creative direction. Though the momentum can sometimes feel as stalled as Joelle’s development, Martin’s humor shines with Joelle’s Rushmore drafts, which cleverly reflect her anxiety ... Despite the fits and starts, Martin’s writing holds the reader’s attention.

... empathetic ... Martin’s latest novel accomplishes an impressive feat of misdirection ... In the wrong hands, all this could feel overly twee, but Martin counterbalances Joey’s art school days with updates from her mother in Lodi ... the art school comedy of manners gives way to a deeper story about navigating disparate worlds and struggling with situations without easy answers ... An unconventional and subtly powerful coming-of-age story.