The narrator of Chelsea Martin’s debut novel Tell Me I’m an Artist is a main character with a minor-character complex. An art student in San Francisco in the early aughts, Joey is smart but self-doubting, resourceful but broke, living on student loans and Cup O’ Noodles while her classmates have mid-century shoe racks and family homes in Tahoe.

She’s also grimly funny — an astute observer of her scene, which she documents in handwritten notes, Craigslist ads, search histories, Venn diagrams, to-do lists. The book is an addictive coming-of-age story and a shrewd novel of manners. As Martin brings into focus the contemporary relationship between cultural production and social mobility, her deadpan satire gives way to a big-hearted, boom-box-thrust-in-the-air defense of making art.