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Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel
“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, Paris, 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.
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, Paris, 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.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published July 12, 2016
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June 21, 2018
this is a tricky little book to review.
i picked it up because it was on the free shelves at work, and since the chelsea hotel has such a whackadoo vibe and reputation, i was curious what growing up in a place steeped in such atmosphere would have been like. plus, leonard cohen, although obviously there wouldn’t have been any overlap because time travel is not a thing yet.
however, for some reason, i didn’t realize until the end that it was written by a 17-year-old girl. had i known that before, i probably wouldn’t have read it, because things written by teenagers are usually not very good, apart from that qualified, “good for their age” appraisal. this one isn’t bad at all, and it’s very fast, which helped me achieve my “one nonfiction book a month” goal, but there are definitely some weaknesses, some of which are excused by the author’s age, and some of which are excused by a further complication. in the author’s note at the end (yeah, i read those), she explains the provenance of this book: it grew out of a journal she had been keeping since the eighth grade; a chronicle of her loneliness and adventures and injustices, which she spent the next five years rewriting with her father as a creative exercise and bonding experience: He has guided me, teaching me how to structure a story, weave together themes, and connect loose ends into a narrative. and then she spotlights that murky back alley where memoir meets fiction:
I know my teachers and classmates and others will not recognize some of the events that I recount, any more than they will recognize their names, which have been changed. Nor should they, because these are the stories of my life; stories that are remembered, imagined, passed down, and often a combination. They are as legitimate as my memories, which are fallible and mysterious, and as real as you care to believe.
this is, to me, the most interesting and mature part of the book. i don’t know if simon & schuster made her address this to stave off any james frey-type situations, but it opens a lot of intriguing mental doorways, mostly to do with marketing and readership, which may not concern you, but pique the interest of my readers’ advisory-minded brain. most books sold as memoir are probably at least 30% spurious, and any discrepancies can be passed off - sincerely or not - as the vagaries of memory and the subjective interpretation of individual experiences. and yet people seem to get real outraged with people like james frey or j.t. leroy, who construct personas and pass them off as memoir because no one wants to know they’ve been fooled. so where does something like this fall, on the scale of outrage? an embellished collaboration between father and daughter (awwww) of fact and fiction (grrrr, pitchforks) presented as memoir because there’s no chimera section at the bookstore.
personally, i have no opinion on the matter because i’m a skeptical realist who mistrusts most of what is passed off as memoir and i believe ’making shit up’ flavors all personal anecdotes from the barstool to the bestseller list. but the writing process does lay to rest some of the questions i was having while reading this in terms of the insights and the articulate speechifying qualities attributed to the author as a child, and her frequently too-knowing responses. it would be one thing if the writing here was exceptional, and these early-promise seedlings from the mouth of babe were harbingers of some genius writer, but even with adult supervision, this book is fine, but not astonishing.
it’s a collection of anecdotes from her childhood, in very brief sketches (some not even a page and a half), and the biggest complaint i have is not that it’s not a ‘true’ memoir, but that it doesn’t have the true chelsea hotel focus i’d been hoping for. a lot of these stories take place at school, at camp, on soccer fields, etc, rather than what i’d been expecting - a little girl knocking on doors and bouncing from apartment to apartment, raised by a community of eccentrics in the crumbling embrace of a legendary landmark. there’s some of that here, but not enough, considering that there are a billion memoirs on the shelves about children who just didn’t fit in with their peers and lived to tell the tale, and what should have set this one apart from those is the faded glamor of the hotel and its kooky inhabitants.
i did love the story in which her perspective of her life in the hotel is rocked by the horrified reactions of a group of her peers when they go to a party at her place. which, if you ever needed proof that little girls have no idea of what’s cool, that is it. because lemme tell you, if i got invited to a princess banquet, where everyone was dolled up and there was a catered four-course meal with cakes and pies and candles and flowers and waiter-service, where i was greeted in the lobby by some dude who yelled “I hope you princesses have a fucking good time” and then got to ride the elevator with a black-clad, stringy-haired woman named smiley who shouted “BACK, MIDGETS!” so her wheelchair could fit in and then started accusing everyone of stealing her electricity, and when that party was later interrupted by a visit from a disheveled and visibly-injured man known as el capitan, wearing nothing but underpants and a cracked monocle, raging about the fight he had with his lover in heavily-accented dramatic flair:
”…I am not seriously injured, though I might well have been. While Lady Hammersmith’s intentions were not clear, her first blow with the ax brought down the canopy of my bed, bruising my head and raising me from my sleep. But for this, I am not certain what would have happened.”
“An ax?” I asked.
“A francisca to be exact - acquired from an antiquarian in the south of France,” he reflected.
well, i would be wondering when i could go back, not fleeing that party in terror. and if i lived there myself, i hope i would be savvy enough to understand that little princesses are clueless about the stuff of life and would be able to celebrate the odd and not disavow my claim to coolness the way the author was embarrassed into:
The Chelsea Hotel was no longer a shining castle, it was a crumbling outpost of outcasts, outbursts, and failure. Those I loved weren’t captains, knights, and ladies, they were addicts and cripples and prostitutes. From that day on I dreaded becoming like them. I strived to distance myself and to fit in elsewhere.
That day I learned I had to keep my Chelsea Hotel to myself. I was ashamed.
little girls are poor barometers of what’s awesome.
it's not a great book, but the stories that actually do involve the hotel's denizens, fictionalized or not, are worth a read.
medium-to-high three stars.
come to my blog!
i picked it up because it was on the free shelves at work, and since the chelsea hotel has such a whackadoo vibe and reputation, i was curious what growing up in a place steeped in such atmosphere would have been like. plus, leonard cohen, although obviously there wouldn’t have been any overlap because time travel is not a thing yet.
however, for some reason, i didn’t realize until the end that it was written by a 17-year-old girl. had i known that before, i probably wouldn’t have read it, because things written by teenagers are usually not very good, apart from that qualified, “good for their age” appraisal. this one isn’t bad at all, and it’s very fast, which helped me achieve my “one nonfiction book a month” goal, but there are definitely some weaknesses, some of which are excused by the author’s age, and some of which are excused by a further complication. in the author’s note at the end (yeah, i read those), she explains the provenance of this book: it grew out of a journal she had been keeping since the eighth grade; a chronicle of her loneliness and adventures and injustices, which she spent the next five years rewriting with her father as a creative exercise and bonding experience: He has guided me, teaching me how to structure a story, weave together themes, and connect loose ends into a narrative. and then she spotlights that murky back alley where memoir meets fiction:
I know my teachers and classmates and others will not recognize some of the events that I recount, any more than they will recognize their names, which have been changed. Nor should they, because these are the stories of my life; stories that are remembered, imagined, passed down, and often a combination. They are as legitimate as my memories, which are fallible and mysterious, and as real as you care to believe.
this is, to me, the most interesting and mature part of the book. i don’t know if simon & schuster made her address this to stave off any james frey-type situations, but it opens a lot of intriguing mental doorways, mostly to do with marketing and readership, which may not concern you, but pique the interest of my readers’ advisory-minded brain. most books sold as memoir are probably at least 30% spurious, and any discrepancies can be passed off - sincerely or not - as the vagaries of memory and the subjective interpretation of individual experiences. and yet people seem to get real outraged with people like james frey or j.t. leroy, who construct personas and pass them off as memoir because no one wants to know they’ve been fooled. so where does something like this fall, on the scale of outrage? an embellished collaboration between father and daughter (awwww) of fact and fiction (grrrr, pitchforks) presented as memoir because there’s no chimera section at the bookstore.
personally, i have no opinion on the matter because i’m a skeptical realist who mistrusts most of what is passed off as memoir and i believe ’making shit up’ flavors all personal anecdotes from the barstool to the bestseller list. but the writing process does lay to rest some of the questions i was having while reading this in terms of the insights and the articulate speechifying qualities attributed to the author as a child, and her frequently too-knowing responses. it would be one thing if the writing here was exceptional, and these early-promise seedlings from the mouth of babe were harbingers of some genius writer, but even with adult supervision, this book is fine, but not astonishing.
it’s a collection of anecdotes from her childhood, in very brief sketches (some not even a page and a half), and the biggest complaint i have is not that it’s not a ‘true’ memoir, but that it doesn’t have the true chelsea hotel focus i’d been hoping for. a lot of these stories take place at school, at camp, on soccer fields, etc, rather than what i’d been expecting - a little girl knocking on doors and bouncing from apartment to apartment, raised by a community of eccentrics in the crumbling embrace of a legendary landmark. there’s some of that here, but not enough, considering that there are a billion memoirs on the shelves about children who just didn’t fit in with their peers and lived to tell the tale, and what should have set this one apart from those is the faded glamor of the hotel and its kooky inhabitants.
i did love the story in which her perspective of her life in the hotel is rocked by the horrified reactions of a group of her peers when they go to a party at her place. which, if you ever needed proof that little girls have no idea of what’s cool, that is it. because lemme tell you, if i got invited to a princess banquet, where everyone was dolled up and there was a catered four-course meal with cakes and pies and candles and flowers and waiter-service, where i was greeted in the lobby by some dude who yelled “I hope you princesses have a fucking good time” and then got to ride the elevator with a black-clad, stringy-haired woman named smiley who shouted “BACK, MIDGETS!” so her wheelchair could fit in and then started accusing everyone of stealing her electricity, and when that party was later interrupted by a visit from a disheveled and visibly-injured man known as el capitan, wearing nothing but underpants and a cracked monocle, raging about the fight he had with his lover in heavily-accented dramatic flair:
”…I am not seriously injured, though I might well have been. While Lady Hammersmith’s intentions were not clear, her first blow with the ax brought down the canopy of my bed, bruising my head and raising me from my sleep. But for this, I am not certain what would have happened.”
“An ax?” I asked.
“A francisca to be exact - acquired from an antiquarian in the south of France,” he reflected.
well, i would be wondering when i could go back, not fleeing that party in terror. and if i lived there myself, i hope i would be savvy enough to understand that little princesses are clueless about the stuff of life and would be able to celebrate the odd and not disavow my claim to coolness the way the author was embarrassed into:
The Chelsea Hotel was no longer a shining castle, it was a crumbling outpost of outcasts, outbursts, and failure. Those I loved weren’t captains, knights, and ladies, they were addicts and cripples and prostitutes. From that day on I dreaded becoming like them. I strived to distance myself and to fit in elsewhere.
That day I learned I had to keep my Chelsea Hotel to myself. I was ashamed.
little girls are poor barometers of what’s awesome.
it's not a great book, but the stories that actually do involve the hotel's denizens, fictionalized or not, are worth a read.
medium-to-high three stars.
come to my blog!
May 18, 2016
I'm a little bit biased.
August 2, 2018
I was on the hunt for a collection of essays and stories, when I stumbled upon this swift read. For better or for worse, Trying to Float was not what I was expecting.
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, Paris, 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.
“The greatest thing about the lobby was that you were never alone. ”
The first essay set at the Chelsea Hotel -“known for its writers, artists, and musicians, but also for its drug addicts, alcoholics, and eccentrics.”- completely captivated my attention in just a handful of pages, which was what convinced me to forge ahead. However, I quickly came to realize that Trying to Float wasn't quite what I'd signed up for. Nicolaia Rips chronicles more about her adolescence and the hardships of making friends in middle school, than growing up in said eccentric hotel. Which I didn't mind that much at first, but it grew a bit tedious and repetitive towards the end. (But I can’t lie: I still love hearing middle school gossip.)
Plus, there were certain residents (Jade!!) and neighbors that I wanted to know more about, instead of reading about some random middle school boy farting into someone's face (yeah, that happened...).
I just felt like these essays had so much potential, however, they didn't live up to what I'd imagined. I felt like we only scratched the surface of intrigue, but didn’t fully dive in to explore.
Also, the author admitting at the end of the book that certain points on the pages of her chronicle were exaggerated made me question multiple times what was real and what was fake. Not going to lie, it felt a lot like this:
But in the end I was just grateful to have found a collection of essays to read after so long without one. And I didn't mind the stream of consciousness narrative, which was a plus for me, along with the subtle humor thrown in for good measure.
Speaking of, here are some of my preferred pieces:
“As tenants passed through the lobby, Stanley would announce how much rent was due and that it had not been paid. It was humiliating. Most of those who owed rent would call the front desk to check if Stanley was in the lobby before exiting the hotel. On those occasions when Stanley left to get a coffee at the Aristocrat, a swarm of tenants would rush out of the hotel.”
Stanley, the landlord, was something else.
“It is said her name was not really Jade, but Stacey. That she arrived at the Chelsea Hotel in the middle of the night during a blizzard, a runaway from Florida. It is said she walked from Port Authority to the hotel wearing only a T-shirt, tattered shorts, and flip-flops. That Stanley Bard said she could stay for a few nights, which extended to months, then years. And that in those years she transformed herself from a little girl to a goddess—her home, from a dark, single room without a toilet, to a suite.”
As I mentioned before, Jade was so fascinating to get to know. Sadly, we only got to hear about her in one swift essay.
And then this little tale Nicolaia told to an anxious girl on their first day of middle school:
“I needed to say something. I settled on a story I had been told that very morning by Jerry, the manager of the front desk at the Chelsea.
“There were two old Jewish men who worked together in a clothing factory,” I began. “It was crowded and hot, and they stood on their feet all day long.”
Ignoring her bewildered look, I continued.
“One of the men was a cutter and the other a sewer. They were both from the old country and spoke with Yiddish accents. One day the sewer went missing.”
The girl stopped crying. I had her attention.
“Exactly two weeks later, the sewer returned to the factory.”
“Where did he go?” the girl asked.
“Well, that’s exactly what the cutter wanted to know. So he says to the sewer, ‘Where were you? You’ve been gone a long time.’ ”
I waited a few seconds, pretending to decide whether I should continue.
“What was his answer?” asked the girl.
“The sewer tells the cutter, ‘I was in Africa.’
“The cutter responds, ‘What did you do in Africa?’
“The sewer, while stitching a piece of cloth, says to the cutter, ‘I traveled all over, I saw many things, and at the end of my trip, I was eaten by a lion.’
“ ‘Wait a second,’ says the cutter. ‘If you were eaten by a lion, you wouldn’t be living.’
“The sewer looks around the factory and says, ‘You call this living?’”
Oh, boy... these kinds of stories always remind me of my family and our gossip and good times. And the more I think about this tale, the more I laugh. It was a good effort.
And there's a lot more where that came from. Essays with similar humor, from playing tic-tac-toe with stoners and going to summer camps seemingly caring for animals, to being accused by a former friend of pregnancy at eleven-years-old… Trying to Float had a lot of middle school shenanigans that I slowly grew keen of observing from the side lines. I mean, there's no doubt that middle school is one of the most baffling periods, or maybe that's high school... Either way, school sucks for the most part and this book was a not-so-subtle reminder of that.
At the heart of it all, it was a very interesting subject matter of coming-of-age in an unexpected place, but there was still something about it that didn't sit right with me. I can't point my finger on one specific thing, but I know that I couldn't shake of my unease for awhile.
Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Trying to Float, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!
Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils
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, Paris, 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.
“The greatest thing about the lobby was that you were never alone. ”
The first essay set at the Chelsea Hotel -“known for its writers, artists, and musicians, but also for its drug addicts, alcoholics, and eccentrics.”- completely captivated my attention in just a handful of pages, which was what convinced me to forge ahead. However, I quickly came to realize that Trying to Float wasn't quite what I'd signed up for. Nicolaia Rips chronicles more about her adolescence and the hardships of making friends in middle school, than growing up in said eccentric hotel. Which I didn't mind that much at first, but it grew a bit tedious and repetitive towards the end. (But I can’t lie: I still love hearing middle school gossip.)
Plus, there were certain residents (Jade!!) and neighbors that I wanted to know more about, instead of reading about some random middle school boy farting into someone's face (yeah, that happened...).
I just felt like these essays had so much potential, however, they didn't live up to what I'd imagined. I felt like we only scratched the surface of intrigue, but didn’t fully dive in to explore.
Also, the author admitting at the end of the book that certain points on the pages of her chronicle were exaggerated made me question multiple times what was real and what was fake. Not going to lie, it felt a lot like this:
But in the end I was just grateful to have found a collection of essays to read after so long without one. And I didn't mind the stream of consciousness narrative, which was a plus for me, along with the subtle humor thrown in for good measure.
Speaking of, here are some of my preferred pieces:
“As tenants passed through the lobby, Stanley would announce how much rent was due and that it had not been paid. It was humiliating. Most of those who owed rent would call the front desk to check if Stanley was in the lobby before exiting the hotel. On those occasions when Stanley left to get a coffee at the Aristocrat, a swarm of tenants would rush out of the hotel.”
Stanley, the landlord, was something else.
“It is said her name was not really Jade, but Stacey. That she arrived at the Chelsea Hotel in the middle of the night during a blizzard, a runaway from Florida. It is said she walked from Port Authority to the hotel wearing only a T-shirt, tattered shorts, and flip-flops. That Stanley Bard said she could stay for a few nights, which extended to months, then years. And that in those years she transformed herself from a little girl to a goddess—her home, from a dark, single room without a toilet, to a suite.”
As I mentioned before, Jade was so fascinating to get to know. Sadly, we only got to hear about her in one swift essay.
And then this little tale Nicolaia told to an anxious girl on their first day of middle school:
“I needed to say something. I settled on a story I had been told that very morning by Jerry, the manager of the front desk at the Chelsea.
“There were two old Jewish men who worked together in a clothing factory,” I began. “It was crowded and hot, and they stood on their feet all day long.”
Ignoring her bewildered look, I continued.
“One of the men was a cutter and the other a sewer. They were both from the old country and spoke with Yiddish accents. One day the sewer went missing.”
The girl stopped crying. I had her attention.
“Exactly two weeks later, the sewer returned to the factory.”
“Where did he go?” the girl asked.
“Well, that’s exactly what the cutter wanted to know. So he says to the sewer, ‘Where were you? You’ve been gone a long time.’ ”
I waited a few seconds, pretending to decide whether I should continue.
“What was his answer?” asked the girl.
“The sewer tells the cutter, ‘I was in Africa.’
“The cutter responds, ‘What did you do in Africa?’
“The sewer, while stitching a piece of cloth, says to the cutter, ‘I traveled all over, I saw many things, and at the end of my trip, I was eaten by a lion.’
“ ‘Wait a second,’ says the cutter. ‘If you were eaten by a lion, you wouldn’t be living.’
“The sewer looks around the factory and says, ‘You call this living?’”
Oh, boy... these kinds of stories always remind me of my family and our gossip and good times. And the more I think about this tale, the more I laugh. It was a good effort.
And there's a lot more where that came from. Essays with similar humor, from playing tic-tac-toe with stoners and going to summer camps seemingly caring for animals, to being accused by a former friend of pregnancy at eleven-years-old… Trying to Float had a lot of middle school shenanigans that I slowly grew keen of observing from the side lines. I mean, there's no doubt that middle school is one of the most baffling periods, or maybe that's high school... Either way, school sucks for the most part and this book was a not-so-subtle reminder of that.
At the heart of it all, it was a very interesting subject matter of coming-of-age in an unexpected place, but there was still something about it that didn't sit right with me. I can't point my finger on one specific thing, but I know that I couldn't shake of my unease for awhile.
Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Trying to Float, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!
Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils
July 7, 2016
3.5 stars. Trying to Float is an odd little book. It is sad and funny all at once. It is a memoir of sorts, but in an afterword at the end the author -- Nicolaia Rips -- confesses that much has been embellished -- which is not surprising given some of the stories. In short vignettes, the author recounts her early life up to the end of middle school. She grew up in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Her parents are eccentric, her adored and adoring neighbours are odd, and not surprisingly this makes the author odd and eccentric too. Many of the stories are funny -- based on Rips' misconceptions about the world. The same stories are sad because Rips was inevitably and painfully excluded by her peers, their parents and even her teachers. Rips' mother is a recognizability loving parent who doesn't quite understand the world her daughter is trying to navigate. Her father will drive you crazy until you read the afterword, and understand more about how this book came to be. There is something surreal about the whole book -- it's very much about events, impressions and reactions -- but there is a sense that much is exaggerated and much is left out. It's a quick, clever, funny and sad read. I would happily read the next chapter in Rips' life. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
April 10, 2021
This book is so special. Written by an exceptionally insightful, compassionate and wise young girl, now a woman, Nicolaia Rips, a cherished only child with the coolest parents who ever lived, Michael and Sheila Rips - writers, and artists, and in her mother's case a beautiful former model, too. This lovely, whimsical book is about those things that remain timeless, that occur in all our lives. Here I am, a woman of 55 from Portland, Oregon and I knew the very same girls Nicolaia Rips describes in her book, the troubled "popular kids" who are really weak, feeble minded and unable to be courageous enough to rise above the Herd Mentality of what it means to be accepted and liked.
With a lovely, deliciously dated and superior vocabulary, (Yes, this girl is brilliant and does NOT write or speak like a kid her age!) she tells those tales that so many people experience, of emotionally stunted teachers who favor the "popular kids" at the expense of other children who need guidance and approval just as much, if not more and of the "popular" kids themselves who are also stunted.
But the book is more than a reckoning with the kids who insulted, hurt and rejected her. It is a book about real people, about the people of the Chelsea Hotel and how they have become a part of her family, and have taught her so much.
I began reading this book five days ago, while in another one of my reading funks. Reading three books but I can't quite commit to one of them all the time. Then I began reading this book and I knew by the fourth chapter that this book will be finished before the other three. It reads that quickly and easily and I finished it today.
Nicolaia Rips is the pretty girl in school who never knew how pretty she was. She is the kid you see who has a big, tender heart who you hope and wish only good things for. What a gift this book is, not only for old jaded women like myself but for all the kids who will read it and will recognize themselves in it and perhaps will grow as a result.
Well done Nicolaia! Well done! This is such a gem of a book. Highly recommended!!
With a lovely, deliciously dated and superior vocabulary, (Yes, this girl is brilliant and does NOT write or speak like a kid her age!) she tells those tales that so many people experience, of emotionally stunted teachers who favor the "popular kids" at the expense of other children who need guidance and approval just as much, if not more and of the "popular" kids themselves who are also stunted.
But the book is more than a reckoning with the kids who insulted, hurt and rejected her. It is a book about real people, about the people of the Chelsea Hotel and how they have become a part of her family, and have taught her so much.
I began reading this book five days ago, while in another one of my reading funks. Reading three books but I can't quite commit to one of them all the time. Then I began reading this book and I knew by the fourth chapter that this book will be finished before the other three. It reads that quickly and easily and I finished it today.
Nicolaia Rips is the pretty girl in school who never knew how pretty she was. She is the kid you see who has a big, tender heart who you hope and wish only good things for. What a gift this book is, not only for old jaded women like myself but for all the kids who will read it and will recognize themselves in it and perhaps will grow as a result.
Well done Nicolaia! Well done! This is such a gem of a book. Highly recommended!!
July 21, 2016
Oh, I so enjoyed this! I love books about the Chelsea hotel and I love memoirs. In some senses this is quite a slight book - almost vignettes from a life - but it also somehow feels that there is a lot going on. How great to read something written by such a young author (I think she's still a teenager?) that is just charmingly and smartly written! The stories are all bohemian, alternative and artistic, I felt right at home.
October 20, 2016
Sorry folks, it seems like I'm the only crazy person who did not love this book. I am sure the author is a lovely young lady. However I did not enjoy reading this coming of age story at all. It just felt too cute and predictable -- Weird kid with quirky parents struggles through elementary and middle school years, eventually comes into her own as a teenager, and learns that it's OK to be different, etc. etc.
There were a few funny moments in the book but overall it was just so lacking to me. Everything was top level, like she needs more practice at story telling. She had some good material to work with, but didn't go deep enough. All of this is excusable, more or less, because the writer is only 18 or so. But it did affect my enjoyment, as I said, so I had to mention it.
Again, I'm sorry.
There were a few funny moments in the book but overall it was just so lacking to me. Everything was top level, like she needs more practice at story telling. She had some good material to work with, but didn't go deep enough. All of this is excusable, more or less, because the writer is only 18 or so. But it did affect my enjoyment, as I said, so I had to mention it.
Again, I'm sorry.
Read
January 24, 2023I was hoping for some dish on famous folks living at the hotel. What this book (prudently) delivers instead is a cast of beloved, quirky neighbors and cringy tales from an offbeat childhood.
September 6, 2016
Another quirky girl memoir. The interesting parts, about her unconventional life growing up in the Chelsea Hotel and her eccentric neighbors, too soon give way to yet another self-absorbed tale of a special little snowflake trying unsuccessfully to fit in. Too much of this book is set in the classroom, schoolyard and inside the author's head, and not nearly enough in the Chelsea Hotel to deserve the subtitle.
The audiobook is read by the author and I found her voice....annoying, which may well have affected my opinion of the story.
The audiobook is read by the author and I found her voice....annoying, which may well have affected my opinion of the story.
May 18, 2016
This book made me laugh until tears came to my eyes. As I've gotten older I've found less and less time to read, but I finished this book in a day by reading it during any and all of my spare moments. By far my favorite book that I've read all year, and I would like to assure readers that it can be read without sadness, as Nicolaia is quite attractive and popular now. I've already recommended it to all of my friends and family.
February 2, 2018
Plutôt 3,5. Un récit espiègle et fantasque, porté par la voix singulière d'une très jeune auteur. Réjouissant.
June 10, 2016
"To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom."
-Patti Smith
Growing up in New York is rough on anyone, but living at the iconic Chelsea Hotel means trying to be you in a town of eccentrics.
And here pops out Nicolaia, sweet little gal who no one falls for. (Let me tell you, girl! We would have been fast friends... princess dresses and all) With two out of the ordinary parents and an entire slew of wacky people, her life is anything but normal.
All she wants to do is live her life and have friends, but kids are vicious and dreams are louder than faithful comrades.
Trying to Flot will lift your spirits while also making you cry with laughter and break your heart for someone who just wants to belong.
Nicolaia writes with such heartfelt passion and wit that you can't help but love her and bring her into your circle.
And to all her haters... well look at her now! Not only is she doing her thing, she wrote a book and is stunningly gorgeous. Who's feel like a dickweed now? Huh? That's what I thought!
Go Girl! Get yours and don't stop writing.
-Patti Smith
Growing up in New York is rough on anyone, but living at the iconic Chelsea Hotel means trying to be you in a town of eccentrics.
And here pops out Nicolaia, sweet little gal who no one falls for. (Let me tell you, girl! We would have been fast friends... princess dresses and all) With two out of the ordinary parents and an entire slew of wacky people, her life is anything but normal.
All she wants to do is live her life and have friends, but kids are vicious and dreams are louder than faithful comrades.
Trying to Flot will lift your spirits while also making you cry with laughter and break your heart for someone who just wants to belong.
Nicolaia writes with such heartfelt passion and wit that you can't help but love her and bring her into your circle.
And to all her haters... well look at her now! Not only is she doing her thing, she wrote a book and is stunningly gorgeous. Who's feel like a dickweed now? Huh? That's what I thought!
Go Girl! Get yours and don't stop writing.
August 31, 2016
I adored this book. Nicolaia Rips has a unique perspective on her world. I was amazed when I found out she published the book at 17 years old, as she wrote with the wise voice of someone who has seen it all (though, I guess growing up in the Chelsea Hotel would constitute "seeing it all"). She has a knack for unconventional characterizations, which seems fitting, considering she was a quirky child. I love that she dressed up as Groucho Marx for Halloween when she was five and that she listed Orson Welles as her favorite author at age eight.
Going into this book, I thought it was going to be more like The Glass Castle, but it ended up being more like a Roald Dahl novel. Throughout her memoir, Rips never once blames her family for anything, and I like that, despite their oddities, they really do love and support their daughter. I cannot wait to see what Rips does in the future. I am a fan.
Going into this book, I thought it was going to be more like The Glass Castle, but it ended up being more like a Roald Dahl novel. Throughout her memoir, Rips never once blames her family for anything, and I like that, despite their oddities, they really do love and support their daughter. I cannot wait to see what Rips does in the future. I am a fan.
March 23, 2017
Amazing read - super funny and light. Pretty amazing that Rips was only 17 when she wrote this!
July 11, 2020
Trying to Float is the coming of age story from then seventeen year-old writer Nicolaia Rips, who spent her childhood living and growing up in the Chelsea Hotel. The main attraction to this novel for many is clearly the hotel - famous for housing a plethora of writers, actors, musicians and artists, there was a steep expectation for an offbeat account of an innocent girl learning life lessons from quirky characters as she traipsed the acclaimed hallways. While several intriguing personalities are introduced throughout, unfortunately there is little depth to these relationships and they are disappointingly pushed aside to focus largely on Rips' schooling. She does well to articulate her social and learning difficulties adjusting to classroom life, but there is not nearly enough substance to flesh out an entire book, which leaves the whole endeavour feeling rather aimless. A light and charming collection of memoirs which falls short of capturing much more than the standard misfit teen episodes.
July 7, 2016
Trying to Float is a wholly unique, tragic-comic memoir from a... HIGH SCHOOL KID??? who comes of age, as promised in the title, living in the legendary Chelsea Hotel, home for decades for artists and misfits of all stripes, under the distracted eye of her artist/misfit parents. The book emerges this month, literally on the heels of Rips' high school graduation, and the fact that someone so young can write so well is frankly unnatural. Unnatural, but with brilliant, engaging results, detailing the trials and tribulations of growing up different in NYC, in the company of the delightfully and disturbingly weird. These colorful vignettes, and the trajectory of our hero Nicolaia, get perhaps a touch weighed down by the amount of middle school drama, but you have to forgive her. Wise as she is beyond her years, she has still not actually been on the planet for very long. However, this book is her personal planet, and it is well worth the visit!
July 19, 2016
Short vignettes from an eccentric childhood growing up in the Chelsea Hotel makes for an amusing ,sad,and darkly humorous account of Nicolaia Rips early years .The Chelsea was known for its artistic community but also had its share of eccentrics, drug addicts and alcoholics. As very few children lived there , Nicolaia lived with colorful residents, ie..an Asian man who wore wings glued to his back while his lower half was encased in a large diaper to Storme, a black albino woman with a pink handgun strapped to her ankle. A quick read, but I soon grew tired of her unconventional life and wished for something more in depth..
September 20, 2025
This is a hell of a lot better than anything I could’ve written at 17 & it’s recommended by Ethan Hawke on the back cover. Happy for her!!
That said, I found a lot of it hard to believe. It felt overdramatized for laughs, & the whole "weird girl, sooo misunderstood" narrative was tough to square with her then somehow becoming student body president & getting into LaGuardia High School despite (allegedly) bombing her audition.
Idk — it kind of gave “pick me” energy. But who am I to critique? Here we are a decade later, she writes for i-D Magazine, gets an invite to Sandy Liang shows, & is 10x cooler than I’ll ever be.
That said, I found a lot of it hard to believe. It felt overdramatized for laughs, & the whole "weird girl, sooo misunderstood" narrative was tough to square with her then somehow becoming student body president & getting into LaGuardia High School despite (allegedly) bombing her audition.
Idk — it kind of gave “pick me” energy. But who am I to critique? Here we are a decade later, she writes for i-D Magazine, gets an invite to Sandy Liang shows, & is 10x cooler than I’ll ever be.
June 18, 2016
This delightful memoir wisely and wittily describes the author's early years. The cast of eccentric characters living in the Chelsea Hotel brings surprising variety to the story. I laughed aloud in places. I did not realize until I finished that Ms Rips is graduating from high school this spring.
May 14, 2016
I kind of enjoyed this--it was well written and very vivid about her school days, but I spent more time worrying about her and her feckless parents than was probably necessary. It was probably a lot funnier for me to read about than her to live through.
I read the ARC of this book.
I read the ARC of this book.
July 18, 2016
Colorful, entertaining stories about eccentric parents and fellow Chelsea Hotel residents along with the usual coming of age stuff. Amusing but ultimately pointless.
March 2, 2020
Nicolaia Rips has written an entertaining and thoughtful memoir. I loved getting to know this precocious young woman growing up in the iconic Chelsea Hotel with her avant-garde, loving parents.
May 4, 2018
I'm giving this a solid 3 stars, though I'd probably give it 5 if I based it solely on the author's personality. (I really like her!) I was expecting more about life in the hotel, and I really wanted more detail about everything. Her group of lunch table friends and the stories about them were my favorite parts of the book. So. This isn't a great book but it's good. Given that she's just 17 when she wrote it, I would very much like to read something else by her in the future to see how she progresses.
December 16, 2020
Triggered by Patti Smith‘s „Just Kids“ I have recently immersed myself in New York‘s 60s and 70s and places like the Chelsea Hotel, Warhol’s Factory and Max‘s Kansas City. While looking for further material I stumbled upon „Trying to Float“. First I was hesitant, as the events described in this memoir are much more recent than the era I am interested in, but the reading proved to be highly and delightfully entertaining, casting light from a different angle at the Chelsea and its still wonderfully quirky inhabitants, while at the same time giving us a beautiful coming of age story of a very lovable outsider.
June 5, 2017
Fun, contemporary memoir.
July 17, 2024
Its giving diary of a dork, was quite amusing
January 9, 2025
Light and enjoyable
January 12, 2025
Very fun read
May 24, 2017
2 1/2 stars. I thought this book was going to be about a girl who grew up in the famed Chelsea Hotel in the 1970s. Instead, it's written by a girl who was born in 1998. Yes, Nicolaia Rips grew up in the Chelsea Hotel, but for some weird reason this memoir is mainly about her life in middle school. It's the usual stuff about being uncool and navigating the world of school dances, summer camps, classes, boys and student council. Her experience is oddly wholesome. Rips is the child of author Michael Rips and model/artist Sheila Berger. Berger is friends with model/author Paulina Porizkova, who helped Rips get her middle school journals published as this memoir. I know some of the reviews have complained that this is a book written by a seventeen-year-old girl but my complaint is that it's not really about an infamous hotel. Instead, it's about one of the more mundane times in life: Middle School. Rips has a fun sense of humor and does have some sweet stories about the quirky tenants in the hotel, but overall, it just wasn't quite what I was looking for.
August 20, 2016
An excellent set of tiny tales from a girl growing up in the Chelsea Hotel in downtown NYC. Cast against a background of unorthodox neighbors from a boutique hotel the reader is walked through handful of memorable encounters from Nicolaia's early childhood to middle school. The book was described to me as "a story that only the author could tell", and that line reverberates strongly with this book, (even with minor embellishments).
I found myself drawn to the rather rich tapestry of people who were drawn in to the stories, and even though I found the schoolyard antics towards the end a tad cliche (but unavoidable given the context?), on the whole the book is an enjoyable and light read, like a cream puff pastry.
I found myself drawn to the rather rich tapestry of people who were drawn in to the stories, and even though I found the schoolyard antics towards the end a tad cliche (but unavoidable given the context?), on the whole the book is an enjoyable and light read, like a cream puff pastry.
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