Author(s): Nicole Flattery

Novel | New York | Ireland | Humour & Satire

In the late 1960s, Pop artist Andy Warhol set out to make an unconventional novel by following a cast of his most famous characters around New York, recording their conversations with his tape recorder. The twenty-four one-hour tapes were transcribed by four women- The Velvet Underground's drummer Maureen Tucker, a Barnard student Susan Pile, and two young women.

In Nothing Special, Nicole Flattery imagines the lives of those high school students- precocious and wise beyond their years but still only teenagers, living with their mothers but working all day in the surreal and increasingly dangerous world of Andy Warhol's Factory, and learning to shape and reshape their identities as they navigate between their low-paid, grueling jobs and their lives at home, in a time of social change for girls and women in America. This blistering, mordantly funny debut interrogates the nature of fantasy and reality, voyeurism and language, and celebrity and the construction of identity. Within the framework of Andy Warhol's surreal world, Flattery asks us to consider at what point does the creation, and consumption, of our public selves turn us into something we don't recognise?

PRAISE FOR SHOW THEM A GOOD TIME'A masterclass . . . Bold, irreverent and agonisingly funny' Sally Rooney'
Announces the arrival of a brilliant talent' Financial Times'
Explores difficult questions about self-worth, agency and intimacy with thrilling sharpness' Sunday Times'
Demands repeated reading' Jon McGregor

Review: [A] blade-sharp coming-of-age debut novel . . . [Flattery] captures the absurdity and the pain, the texture of city streets and the squalid luxury, and brings a deadpan wit to the whole sex and drugs and Pop-art scene * Spectator *
This debut novel is that rare thing, an original, off-kilter coming-of-age story, in which life and art collide in unsettling ways * Mail on Sunday *
Nothing Special is as stylishly written as its predecessor Show Them a Good Time. Indeed there are shades of Saul Bellow, in her rendering of New York that 'shrieking cartoon hell' . . . [Flattery] deserves only praise * Sunday Independent *
Nothing Special confirms Flattery as a bracingly original writer; her observations clear-eyed and cool-headed, never pretentious. Readers may be tempted to underline every other sentence in this striking debut from an exciting new voice' * Irish Independent *
Flattery demonstrates here how she can shape on a larger scale and be incredibly inventive in the process . . . [Her] willingness to be ugly and merciless on the page is what makes her work so relentlessly engaging * Financial Times *
A riveting read about fame, myth-making and finding your own identity * Good Housekeeping *
Flattery is a keen observer of relational dynamics in groups of women, and how these connections can both support and strangle. Her characters feel complicated and real * Telegraph, Highlights for 2023 *
If you've ever found yourself obsessing over Edie Sedgwick (her biography by Jean Stein is a must-read) then Nothing Special will be right up your street. Set against 60s New York and Andy Warhol's Factory, this is a coming-of-age story that conjures up the lure of the era * Stylist, Highlights for 2023 *
Nicole Flattery's treatment of determined, bewildered young women - as they discover the vast distance between how they are perceived and how they feel themselves to be - is brilliantly gloomy, droll and so out-of-body as to be real . . .They try on and take off their survival instincts like costumes, in a painful, beguiling, apt twist on art for art's sake. The authenticity of Flattery's work offers its own reassurance that sometimes art is good -- Caoilinn Hughes
There are many things to enjoy in Nicole Flattery's debut novel ... Mae is an engaging protagonist with a wit about her coming-of-age struggles * Independent *
A sharp portrait of New York's art scene in the sixties and one woman's place in it. Through inventive prose, Flattery writes into history the under-celebrated voices, and she does it in a masterful way. A superb novel -- Elaine Feeney
In enviably beautiful prose, she manages to be both arch and deadly serious. Wonderful stuff. -- Louise Kennedy
Audacious, original and fully achieved - this is a remarkable novel -- Kevin Barry
One of the most exciting releases of 2023 . . . A dizzying exploration of sex, freedom, art and voyeurism, seen through the coming-of-age of 17-year-old Mae. Deftly woven and captivating, it signals the arrival of a new literary talent * Harper's Bazaar, highlights for 2023 *
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 . . . 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'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 YOUNG SKINS
I couldn't put this razor sharp, darkly funny coming-of-age story down -- Louisa Reid, author of THE POET
A wry, witty and wonderful novel from a brilliantly captivating storyteller -- Joseph O'Connor
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 Biography: Nicole Flattery is the author of Show Them a Good Time. Her work has been published in the Stinging Fly, White Review, Dublin Review, Irish Times and Winter Papers, among others. She contributed a story to Faber's 2019 Anthology of New Irish Writing, and her story 'Track' won the 2017 White Review Short Story Prize. A graduate of the master's program in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin, she lives in Galway.