A new novel imagines life in Andy Warhol’s studio

When Mae, 17 years old and adrift, is offered a job as a typist for Andy Warhol, she is given instructions. “Don’t become invested in how good you are at this,” says Anita, the head secretary. Her role is to listen to tapes and transcribe them, no more. In “Nothing Special”, Nicole Flattery, a raucously talented young Irish writer, takes inspiration from the imagined lives of the young women who were never credited but worked on “a, A Novel” (1968), an experimental book the Pop Art supremo compiled from unedited conversations with his stable of muses, whom he called his “superstars”.