Nothing Special
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3.8 • 12 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND TIME
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the inspired latest from Irish writer Flattery (Show Them a Good Time), a woman looks back on her disaffected youth in 1960s New York City, where she falls into the Andy Warhol scene. In 2010, Mae reflects on her estrangement from her late mother, which intensified in 1966 when Mae was 17 and feeling aliened from family, classmates, and city. She drops out of high school for a secretarial position working for Andy Warhol, and works at his studio with teenage runaway Shelley transcribing two years of Andy's tape recordings. Invigorated by the work and her friendship with Shelley, Mae feels most connected to the scene while listening to the tapes, believing it's the "only thing worth doing." On them, art stars such as Ondine divulge their intimate secrets. Over time, the vanity and voyeurism surrounding Mae prompts her to turn inward, and she starts inserting her own personality into the transcriptions, which drives a wedge between herself and the studio. In a canny move, Warhol's factory, shown only amorphously, is stripped of the usual mythology and comes across more sweatshop than creative hotbed, a "doll house, with girls arranged everywhere." Against this gloomy background, a self-possessed Mae tries to find her 15 minutes of fame. Flattery's fresh take on familiar lore makes this something special indeed.
