Nothing Special

A 2023 Highlight For: The Times * Telegraph * Stylist * GQ * Guardian * Harper's Bazaar * Good Housekeeping * Waterstones * i-D * Irish Times * Huffington Post UK

'I truly love Nicole Flattery's writing' Sally Rooney

'In enviably elegant prose, she manages to be both arch and deadly serious' Louise Kennedy

'A wry, witty and wonderful novel from a brilliantly captivating storyteller' Joseph O'Connor

A wildly original debut novel about two young women navigating the complex worlds of Andy Warhol's Factory, and coming of age in 1960s New York

New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down 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.

Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story about friendship, independence and the construction of art and identity, bringing to life the experience of young women in this iconic and turbulent 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, Dublin, she lives in Galway, Ireland.