Mae

The protagonist of Nothing Special is Mae, a young woman living in New York in the 1960s. At the start of the novel, Mae is a seventeen-year-old high schooler. She lives in a small apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother’s on-and-off boyfriend, Mikey (her biological father is absent throughout the novel). Mae describes herself as a young woman “to be watched: my restless energy, my occasionally lacerating insults” (17). She feels a great deal of separation from her peers and has only one friend, Maud, whom Mae “didn’t particularly like… anymore, felt no fondness or connection [towards]” (18). This friendship collapses after Mae makes a disparaging comment about a fellow student who suffered an apparent seizure. Throughout the novel, Mae continues to show this relative disregard for social convention; she remains stubborn, bold, and often provocative.

Early in the novel, Mae rides the escalators at department...