Trying to Float by Nicolaia Rips: book review

Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel (2016) is set in the Hotel Chelsea, New York, from 1998 to 2015. This is a Young Adult book - the memoir of a 17-year-old school girl who has lived her whole life in the infamous Hotel Chelsea.

This is not just a memoir, it is also about the historic Hotel Chelsea, famed since it was built in 1966 for its legendary guests, such as Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Gore Vidal, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Satre, Leonard Cohen, and Patti Smith.

Father Michael, a writer, and mother Sheila, an artist, moved into a one-room apartment in the hotel and set about finding a school for Nicolaia (Nicki). Slow academically, and slow to fit in socially, Nicki was nevertheless gifted in public speaking. Shy at school yet precocious in her home-hotel setting, this is her story of trying to make friends among a motley crew. For not only is the school the institution for children of well known celebrities or wealthy people, but it is also a school of cliques, and the hotel is not only a place for the artistic but also for home to drug addicts, ladies of the night, misfits and mavericks.

At school there are Pippi the dance teacher, Doris, Uhura, Fan, Janie, Greta, Noah, Roberto, Ned and the secret group. In the hotel there are The Crafties, an 80-year-old sexually ambiguous Storme, the Capitan, Artie and his wife Colleen and daugher Dahlia.

Although there is a cast of characters, this is predominantly about outcasts and awkwardness, friendlessness and loneliness. There is nothing fancy in the writing, but there are witty and comical life-episodes, with a blend of self-deprecating humour and sassy initiative.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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