"Hysterically droll, touching, elegant, and wisea 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 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 funnyat 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 heartwill appeal to adults and teens alike" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).