Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel - Rilegato

Rips, Nicolaia

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1501132989 ISBN 13: 9781501132988

Casa editrice: Scribner, 2016

Riassunto

“Hysterically droll, touching, elegant, and wise—a coming-of-age story from someone who possibly came of age before her parents” (Patricia Marx, New Yorker writer and bestselling author), Trying to Float is a seventeen-year-old’s darkly funny, big-hearted memoir about growing up in New York City’s legendary Chelsea Hotel.

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.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Nicolaia Rips is a freshman at Brown University (class of 2020). She has lived at the Chelsea Hotel for her entire life. In her spare time, she studies vocal music, participates in team sports, reads avidly, and tolerates her parents. Trying to Float is her first book.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

Trying to Float

MY FIRST TRIP

EIGHT YEARS INTO my parents’ marriage, my mom discovered that she was pregnant. This seemingly joyous event was dented by my dad’s denial that such a terrible thing could happen to him. Convinced that he wasn’t responsible, he accused my openly gay godfather, Tom, of fathering the child.

My mom was an extraordinary traveler, and though excited about the pregnancy, feared that a baby would signal the end of her journeys. She began to plan a trip to Iran.

Because she needed a visa to get into Iran and couldn’t get one in the United States, she flew to London and applied for her visa there. She was five months pregnant.

In London, the Iranian consulate informed her that a visa could take months. Never one to wait around, she decided to travel the Uzbek silk road while waiting for her visa to arrive in Tashkent. An Iranian doctor in London gave her a note that said she could travel until seven months pregnant. With this, she and I were off.

Back in New York, my dad refused to admit that he had a wife, much less a daughter on the way. This fantasy came to an end when he picked up his mail to find a postcard from a grinning woman, with a swelling belly, firing off automatic weapons with a group of equally happy Uzbek men. The caption read, “Enjoying the afternoon with your daughter!”

Acknowledging the imminent arrival of his daughter, my father, who had previously handled my mother’s trips to the most dangerous parts of the world by confining himself to a two-block radius that included the Chelsea Hotel, his favorite café, and his barber, now added visits to a psychiatrist to the mix. What she thought of his reflections on his childhood in Nebraska, vivid and unexpected, like pimentos in the center of olives, I dare not imagine.

On July 19, exactly four weeks before I was born, my father opened the door to find a woman wearing a burka. When my mother went into labor at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, my dad was finally forced to venture outside his circle of comfort. Having done so—and meeting me—he realized it wasn’t so bad out there.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Scribner
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1501132989
• ISBN 13: 9781501132988
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 254
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile