Nothing Special

KEVIN POWER, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

"The reader starts to become conscious of the strangely generic quality of the world that Mae's narration evokes ... The retrospective view might give Flattery a certain cover for her curiously generic settings, just as it might release her from some of the traditional obligations of historical fiction ... Almost every paragraph swerves unforgivingly into its own punch line, as in some relentless stand-up comedy routine ... The prose of Nothing Special is less spiky and more traditionally expository than that of the short stories. The nervous virtuosity of the stories has been tamed; the mood is memoiristic. There are gorgeous touches."