Nothing Special

A wildly original, "gorgeous . . . brave and effecting" (New York Times Book Review) coming--of age novel about a teenage girl working at Andy Warhol's Factory in 1960s New York.

New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a rundown apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother's sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets. When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol.

Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement. Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae's life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her.

For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mary Gaitskill, Nothing Special is a whip-smart, mordantly funny coming-of-age story that brings to life the experience of young girls in this iconic and turbulent American moment, and brilliantly interrogates the intersections of friendship, art, and identity.

Author: Nicole Flattery
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 08/13/2024
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.51w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781639734665

About the Author
Nicole Flattery is the author of the story collection Show Them a Good Time. She is the winner of the An Post Irish Book Award, the Kate O'Brien Prize, the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction, and the White Review Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in the Stinging Fly, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and elsewhere. A graduate of the master's program in creative writing at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin, Ireland.