Nothing special by Nicole Flattery

1966 New York, and 16-year-old Mae is looking for escape from her alcoholic mother and school bullies. She finds this in the invitation to become a typist for the eccentric Drella, where she has to transcribe the tapes of strange, disjointed conversations and interviews and that will comprise his book. Over time we realise that these are the tapes that became Warhol’s 1968 novel,  A Novel and that Mae is one of the four impressionable young typists privy to the events and personalities of 1965 that Warhol surrounded himself with. However, like Mae, we barely meet Warhol himself, but Flattery has vividly conjured up the gritty atmosphere of abandon and hedonism that he created, often to the detriment of his followers.

Mae begins to identify more with the contents of the tapes than with her own unsatisfying life, and although unacknowledged, sees herself as part-author of the book. She becomes an uneasy voyeur and sometime participant of the bizarre, often degrading activities in Warhol’s The Factory, which compounds the disillusionment she experiences with her own life.

In several short chapters, we also see Mae, aged 35 and 60, reflecting back on that time, and particularly her relationship with her mother, recalled with more perception, but possibly no greater sense of fulfilment or contentment.

In some regards, nothing special happens in the book, and Mae sees herself as nothing special, but set as it is, in a period of rapid and unprecedented social change, she makes many insightful observations about the process of making and consuming art, and the need to belong, achieve, make a statement and rebel.

Nothing Special would be best appreciated if the reader has some knowledge of Warhol and his world, in order to place the characters, and not be surprised by the numerous descriptions of sex scenes, drug use and situations of coercive, emotional abuse, voyeurism and obsessions.

Themes: Warhol, 1960s, New York, Coming of age, Relationships.

Margaret Crohn