I read a chunk of this book and then went back to the blurb - I am not sure if they have got the text and the blurb mixed up but they seem completely unrelated. The book I was reading was about the rather dull lives of a number of girls. It jumped about so I could not get a grip on the characters or the stories. It was one of those books that after five days of trying to read it I still could not remember a thing that had happened or a defining feature of any of the characters.
I am afraid I put it down and have no desire to pick it up again.

Nicole Flattery’s first novel has an intriguing premise. In 1967, two young high school students helped transcribe tapes of conversations and monologues made by Andy Warhol’s coterie, later published as a novel.. Nothing Special reimagines the lives of these two anonymous women who briefly lived on the fringes of a group mythologised for their part in sixties counterculture.
Mae is ostracised in high school when her one friend makes public her callous remarks about a fellow pupil, riding the escalators at Macys rather than going to classes. An introduction to a shady doctor leads her to Warhol’s studio. Mae has no idea who Warhol is and is never introduced to him but when Shelley, a fellow high school misfit and runaway, invites her to share the transcription of twenty-four tapes she’s drawn into a decadent world full of cruelty and humiliation. She and Shelley feel as if they know these people, their friendship based on their growing emotional investment in them. Looking back, decades later, Mae remembers those intense few months which have left her scarred.
Mae tells us her story in an often sardonic, sharp, apparently detached voice. She’s a brilliantly realised character, her retelling of her time at the studio both vivid and compelling. Mae never quite gets over her exposure to this world of self-obsessed, beautiful people seemingly intent on humiliating each other under Warhol’s dispassionate gaze, careless of the damage done to the more vulnerable in the pursuit of his art. A fascinating novel, original and smartly delivered.

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery is about a girl who goes to work transcribing tapes at Andy Warhol’s Factory. It explores celebrity and identity and voyeurism but the parts I found strongest were focused on friendship and feelings of wanting to escape your own life.