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Table of Contents
About The Book
Meet the family Rips: father Michael, a lawyer turned writer with a penchant for fine tailoring; mother Sheila, a former model and renowned sculptor who matches her welding outfits with couture; and daughter Nicolaia, a precocious and wry high school student at work on a highly unusual extracurricular activity, an official record of her peculiar childhood.
Nicolaia is a perpetual outsider who has struggled to find her place in schools populated by cliquish girls and loudmouthed boys. But at the Chelsea, Nicolaia she has found her tribe. There’s her neighbor Stormé, a tall albino 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 realizes that the Chelsea’s motley crew could hold the key to surviving the perils of her adolescence.
“Nicolaia Rips is an old-soul sophisticate. Trying to Float is like Eloise meets Wes Anderson” (Elle), and not since Holden Caulfield has there been such a fabulously compelling teen guide to New York City. Rips’s debut is “charmingly self-deprecating and very funny…at once highly insightful and deeply familiar” (W Magazine), a triumphant parable for the power of embracing difference in all its forms. Her “engaging story with a big heart…will appeal to adults and teens alike” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (June 13, 2017)
- Length: 272 pages
- ISBN13: 9781501132995
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Raves and Reviews
“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’ ability to write simply, paired with her dry wit, propels the reader through her coming-of-age...An impressive debut."
– Onion A.V. Club
– Patricia Marx, New Yorker staff writer and author of Let’s Be Less Stupid and Him Her Him Again The End of Hi
– Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog
– Ethan Hawke
– Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
– Publishers Weekly
– Joel Grey, author of Master of Ceremonies
"Reading about Nic’s bohemian childhood is like chatting with a friend over coffee and busting out laughing over the most awkward moments from your past—hers were just a lot more exotic! This peek into the author’s diverse, unfocused childhood was hilarious, heartwarming and totally outrageous."
– Justine Magazine
“Rips is disarmingly inquisitive . . . and a magnetic storyteller. Count Rips as one of the hotel’s most gifted latter-day offspring.”
– O Magazine
"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
“The next Lena Dunham or David Sedaris may just be 17-year-old Nicolaia Rips, whose memoir, Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel, is a brilliant chronicle of the place where she has spent virtually all of her life.”
– Buffalo News
Awards and Honors
- ILA Young Adults' Book Award
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Trying to Float Trade Paperback 9781501132995
- Author Photo (jpg): Nicolaia Rips Ursula Bowling(0.1 MB)
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