Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel
Language: English
Published by Scribner, 2016
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books (was SecondSale)
AbeBooks seller since December 20, 2007
Condition: Used - Good
£ 3.83
Quantity: 3 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.
Seller Inventory # 00083171144
- Title
- Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel
- Author
- Rips, Nicolaia
- Publisher
- Scribner
- Publication year
- 2016
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1501132989
- ISBN 13
- 9781501132988
New York’s Chelsea Hotel may no longer be home to its most famous denizens—Andy Warhol, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, to name a few—but the eccentric spirit of the Chelsea is alive and well. Meet the family Rips: father Michael, a lawyer turned writer with a penchant for fine tailoring; mother Sheila, a former model and renowned artist who matches her welding outfits with couture; and daughter Nicolaia, a precocious high school junior at work on a record of her peculiar seventeen years.
Nicolaia is a perpetual outsider who has struggled to find her place in public schools populated by cliquish girls and loudmouthed boys. But at the Chelsea, Nicolaia need not look far to find her tribe. There’s her neighbor Stormé, a tall woman who keeps a pink handgun strapped to her ankle; her babysitter, Jade, who may or may not have a second career as an escort; her friend Artie, former proprietor of New York’s most famous nightclubs. The kids at school might never understand her, but as Nicolaia endeavors to fit in she begins to understand that the Chelsea’s motley crew could hold the key to surviving the perils of a Manhattan childhood.
Not since Holden Caulfield has there been such a fabulously compelling teen guide to New York City: Nicolaia Rips’s debut is a disarming, humble, heartfelt, and wise tale of coming-of-age amid the contradictions, complexities, and shifting identities of life in New York City. A bohemian Eloise for our times, Trying to Float is a triumphant parable for the power of embracing difference in all its forms.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
--Ethan Hawke
"Trying to Float is hysterically droll, touching, elegant, and wise-- a coming-of-age story from someone who possibly came of age before her parents. No doubt, people will allude to other books in attempts to describe this one (Holden Caulfield if he went to public school, Eloise without room service) but truly Nicolaia's chronicle is sui generis. I had such a good time reading it that the person I share an apartment with told me to stop saying, "You can't believe how extraordinary this is!" because he was trying to concentrate on something else and anyway, he believed me the first time." --Patricia Marx "New Yorker staff writer and author of Let's Be Less Stupid and Him Her Him Again The End of Hi "
"These little tales about little rascals in New York City are charming, strange, and inspiring. What a very funny, improbably truthful book about childhood this is." --Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog
"I love this book! Nicolaia Rips, while young, is the real thing. Wodehouse reborn in a young girl. He would have been charmed."
--Joel Grey, author of Master of Ceremonies
"Nicolaia Rips is an old-soul sophisticate who's written a breezy memoir. [Trying to Float] is like Eloise Meets Wes Anderson."--Elle
"A charmingly self-deprecating and very funny collection of short chapters chronicling the awkwardness of elementary-school growing pains against the backdrop of living in the iconic and infamous Chelsea Hotel, Trying to Float is at once highly insightful and deeply familiar."--W Magazine
"Seventeen-year-old Nicolaia Rips is wise beyond her years in her off-kilter memoir, Trying to Float."--Vanity Fair
"Rips is disarmingly inquisitive . . . and a magnetic storyteller. Count Rips as one of the hotel's most gifted latter-day offspring."--O Magazine
"The book portrays a flamboyant cast of residents . . The juvenile point of view adds poignancy to the depiction of messy adult lives and New York's vanishing bohemia."--New Yorker
"Trying to Float is filled with the pinpoint descriptions and humor of Lena Dunham and the children's book Eloise. In it, Nicolaia examines her wonder years with the clarity of an old soul who's seen it all."--i-D/Vice
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
World of Books (was SecondSale)
Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since December 20, 2007
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Founded in 2002, World of Books is a leading online destination for buying and selling both preloved and new books, committed to making sustainable reading accessible to all. With a mission to help people read more and waste less, World of Books offers a huge range of affordable, high-quality books — giving both new and preloved titles a second life. The company also operates World of Books – Sell Your Books, an easy-to-use platform that allows customers to trade in unwanted books for cash, helping to keep books in circulation while promoting sustainability. As a Certified B Corp, World of Books is driven by a vision to become the world’s largest and most sustainable dedicated online bookstore. The company measures its success through the positive environmental impact it creates, the value it provides to customers, and its ability to operate profitably while supporting its sustainable mission …
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