Trying to Float: A Memoir by Nicolaia Rips | eBook

“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, warmhearted memoir about growing up in New York City’s legendary Chelsea Hotel.

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).

Publishers Weekly

05/16/2016
Growing up in New York City is an adventure, but growing up in the city’s famed Chelsea Hotel is an adventure that high school student Rips chronicles in her droll memoir. While it’s not uncommon to be cramped for space in N.Y.C., Rips and her preoccupied but loving parents live together in a one-room apartment in a hotel that’s known for its unusual characters. Rips was always more comfortable in the company of adults than children, and she spent most of her childhood friendless, hanging around hotel inhabitants such as the Mr. Crafties, two men who perpetually sat arguing in the lobby. She recounts failed attempts to join a variety of activities in her elementary school, most of them ending comically and badly. Her parents didn’t seem to care that their daughter was the least popular girl in school. This changed in middle school when she found her own tribe of misfits. What doesn’t change are Rips’s indefatigable sense of humor about her own circumstances and her confidence. Readers will be impressed that this young author has written such a powerful memoir, and that she persevered through adolescence and her atypical upbringing to emerge as a strong, if eccentric, individual. This heartfelt memoir balances pathos and humor, proving that Rips, still only a senior in high school, is a promising writer who is wise beyond her years. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (July)

New Yorker

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.

Elle

Nicolaia Rips is an old-soul sophisticate who’s written a breezy memoir. [Trying to Float] is like Eloise Meets Wes Anderson.

Vanity Fair

Seventeen-year-old Nicolaia Rips is wise beyond her years in her off-kilter memoir, Trying to Float.

Buffalo News

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.

W Magazine

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.

O Magazine

Rips is disarmingly inquisitive . . . and a magnetic storyteller. Count Rips as one of the hotel’s most gifted latter-day offspring.

Onion A.V. Club

"Rips’ ability to write simply, paired with her dry wit, propels the reader through her coming-of-age...An impressive debut."

Justine Magazine

"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."

Joseph O’Neill

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.

New Yorker staff writer and author of Let's Be Less Stupid and Him Her Him Again The End of Hi - Patricia Marx

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."

New Yorker staff writer and author of Let's Be Less Stupid and Him Her Him Again The End of Hi - Patty Marx

Ethan Hawke

"As a former resident of the Chelsea Hotel, I came at this book with trepidation. What could an 17-year-old have to say about the last Dionysian castle in New York City? My skepticism ended with the prologue. Nicolaia Rips writes with wit, discipline, and grace. Her voice is real. With this book she is announcing herself as a force in the next generation of artists."

Joel Grey

I love this book! Nicolaia Rips, while young, is the real thing. Wodehouse reborn in a young girl. He would have been charmed.”

i-D/Vice

"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."

School Library Journal

11/01/2016
Rips's delightful memoir will amuse readers of all ages. Her eccentric childhood, spent growing up in an apartment in the famous Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, is described with wit and humor. Spanning from preschool entrance to the end of eighth grade, her work addresses her struggle to make friends and fit in at school. The insightful anecdotes are so well-done that readers will assume that Rips is an adult, but the teenage author graduated from high school in 2016 and this is her first book. Young adults will hope that a sequel covering her years at La Guardia High School for the Performing Arts is forthcoming and wonder if she is as funny in person as she is on the page. The tenants of the Chelsea are not the famous ones of the past, but those portrayed were important for the young girl, whose parents did not arrange the usual playdates. Rips's parents are depicted as creative optimists from the Midwest, and, fortunately for readers, her father tired of her troublesome tales about school and suggested that she write them down instead of complaining. VERDICT This hilarious selection will make readers laugh and could encourage young people to keep a diary and try their own hand at writing.—Karlan Sick, formerly at New York Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-04-19
First-time author Rips, a high school senior who lives with her parents in New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel, reflects on her earlier years attending public schools in the city and befriending the many eccentric residents at the hotel.In this delightful coming-of-age memoir, the author draws a portrait of her younger self as the ultimate outsider. Lacking traditional good looks, physically and often socially awkward, she was eager to make friends, yet her frequent attempts to fit in typically led to embarrassing results, her desire to be popular spiraling further away. In contrast to her challenging school life, she found it easy to connect with her neighbors. She has been accepting of their eccentricities and attuned to some of their own struggles: "our home was in the Chelsea Hotel, known for its writers, artists, and musicians, but also for its drug addicts, alcoholics, and eccentrics. At any given time, at least one from each group was in the lobby. Since there were few children in the hotel, it was with these people that I spent my time." Her story progresses through a series of comedic episodes at school or within her home/hotel setting, and she vividly depicts each of the various characters she has encountered along the way. She writes about the many self-absorbed, narcissistic teachers and classmates (along with their obsessively hovering parents), while her neighbors come across as free-spirited and openly caring individuals—as do her parents, who can also be somewhat scatterbrained: "They were like balloons that had escaped a child's grasp—pointlessly floating." Rips is a gifted writer who quickly reveals a mature, nuanced insight into human behavior. She has a genuine talent for extracting comic potential within these encounters, yet she balances them with moments of surprising poignancy. An engaging story with a big heart, written by a young adult whose sharply tuned and often witty observations will appeal to adults and teens alike.

Trying to Float: A Memoir

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