Nothing Special (Hardcover)
Description
From the author Sally Rooney called “bold, irreverent, and agonizingly funny,” a wildly original 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, this blistering, mordantly funny debut novel brilliantly interrogates the nature of friendship and independence and the construction of art and identity. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story that brings to life the experience of young girls in this iconic and turbulent American moment.
About the Author
Nicole Flattery is the author of the story collection Show Them A Good Time. She is the winner of 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 White Review, and the London Review of Books. A graduate of the master's program in creative writing at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Praise For…
“I truly love Nicole Flattery's writing.” —Sally Rooney, Author of NORMAL PEOPLE and CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
“In fitting her complex, heartfelt, vexing characters into the spaces left where the names of Warhol's typists should have been, Flattery is finally giving those egos, or a version of them, a chance to tell their own story, in their own words.” —Guardian
“With a healthy dash of dark humor, [NOTHING SPECIAL] showcases Flattery's unflinching observations of human complexity.” —Electric Literature
“Flattery's coming-of-age debut novel is a bold and brilliant examination of an iconic-and ultimately hollow-movement from the vantage point of its most invisible cogs . . . The subversive approach to a familiar modern mythos, the cool-but-crackling dialogue, the knotty psychological portrait of its rescued-and-reimagined protagonist. Between this brava debut, and her weirdly-compelling 2020 collection Show Them a Good Time, Flattery has already established herself one of the most talented and intriguing writers at work in Ireland today.” —Lit Hub
“Bleakly funny... compelling... not just for Warhol fans.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Flattery provides a harsh look at the line between art and voyeurism and the struggle to define oneself in a world of overwhelming influences … The novel provides an introspective take on the period and, like modern art, forces readers to look inside themselves for the meaning of the broad strokes on the page.” —Library Journal
“Deftly woven and captivating” —Harper's Bazaar, The best new fiction books to read in 2023
“Brilliant. The language and the writing are so original” —Sarah Carson, iNews
“I derive so much energy from Nicole Flattery's writing. Nothing Special casts such a stylish and transportive spell, perhaps it's better to dust off adjectives like “marvelous” and “fabulous.” I'll never again ride an escalator without thinking of this book.” —Sloane Crosley, author of I WAS TOLD THERE'D BE CAKE and CULT CLASSIC
“Audacious, original and fully achieved – this is a remarkable novel.” —Kevin Barry, author of NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER
“In enviably elegant prose, she manages to be both arch and deadly serious. Wonderful stuff.” —Louise Kennedy, author of TRESPASSES
“Flattery's sentences are astonishing. Their wit and ingenuity, the apt oddness of her metaphors, are addictive and relentlessly delightful, and then all of a sudden her language snaps into an exactness of feeling that knocks you sideways. A special, singular, blazingly original and truly achieved first novel.” —Colin Barrett, author of HOMESICKNESS and YOUNG SKINS
“Told with dry wit and sharp observation, Nothing Special speaks in a profound and original way to our age of vacuous consumerism, our empty quests for self-discovery, and our parasitism on celebrity and trend. Flattery ingeniously uses 1960s New York - where the high priest of pop Andy Warhol exploits and mimics for art - to draw striking parallels between artistic creation through reproduction, and the role of fantasy, envy and voyeurism in self-creation. A bold and funny coming-of-age novel about the emptiness of the cult of self, the fetishisation of fame, and the aimless drift of late-stage capitalism.” —Imogen Crimp, author of A VERY NICE GIRL
“Flattery channels an unlikely muse in Mae; a young typist tasked with transcribing the lives of avant garde artists, aspiring starlets and hanger-ons in Warhol's orbit. With rich interiority, she captures the exhilarating, mundane, and often brutal wilderness of girlhood, set in one of the most mythologized cultural eras of our time. Flattery manages to lay bare our enduring parasocial fantasies and celebrity obsession, and the fraught nature of power, art, identity, sex and friendship, all with lucid prose and deadpan humor. A truly addictive read.” —Nada Alic, author of Bad Thoughts
“A wry, witty and wonderful novel from a brilliantly captivating storyteller.” —Joseph O'Connor, author of STAR OF THE SEA and SHADOWPLAY
“Darkly funny, tender, smart as anything and riddled with the most wonderful sentences, Nothing Special is a superb debut novel from a superb writer. Nicole Flattery is in a league of her own.” —John Patrick McHugh, author of PURE GOLD
“There's laughter in the dark and darkness in the laughter in these fabulously astute stories that are at once surreal and more real than reality. Nicole Flattery is so good.” —Melissa Broder, author of MILK FED