Nothing Special

In Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special, Mae revisits her youth in 1960s New York, where she falls into a typist job at Andy Warhol’s Factory. There, she’s tasked with transcribing recordings of Andy’s interviews and grows increasingly fixated on the conversations she hears. But in Flattery’s nostalgic coming-of-age narrative, Warhol is hardly mentioned by name and his Factory is stripped of its infamous mythology, making the observant—and sometimes obsessive—Mae the true star of the story. Though primarily set in 1966, Nothing Special flips back and forth between the past and present, and serves as a clever critique of modern-day parasocial relationships, surveillance, voyeurism, and performance. —Meg Zukin

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