A review by imrogers
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn, David Levithan
4.0
I picked up Nick and Norah because I wanted to see what a novel collaboration between two writers would look like, and had a great time with it. Sure, it's "just" a novel about two eighteen year-olds who meet and have a magical night together while dealing with their respective insecurities, and yes, these moments can be overwritten or heavyhanded at times -- let's put that out there right now.
What's really enjoyable about this book are the two narrative voices, which are fun, fast-paced, surprisingly evocative of Modernist stream-of-consciousness (think James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in the best of ways!), and full of pop-culture references. Simply put, this is a fun book to read, and it's about fun things like punk music, what happens when your friend drinks too much, and borrowing people's secondhand jackets with nametags sewn on them. It's also about serious things like breakups, emotional trauma, body issues, and sexual insecurity (the last of which Rachel Cohn captures incredibly well in the Norah chapters). There are also references to My So-Called Life, and that's just awesome.
One can easily see how the more recent teen romance The Sun is Also a Star was modeled after this book with a more involved plot and multiple narrators. Nick and Norah, though, as well as their respective writers, are more badass.
What's really enjoyable about this book are the two narrative voices, which are fun, fast-paced, surprisingly evocative of Modernist stream-of-consciousness (think James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in the best of ways!), and full of pop-culture references. Simply put, this is a fun book to read, and it's about fun things like punk music, what happens when your friend drinks too much, and borrowing people's secondhand jackets with nametags sewn on them. It's also about serious things like breakups, emotional trauma, body issues, and sexual insecurity (the last of which Rachel Cohn captures incredibly well in the Norah chapters). There are also references to My So-Called Life, and that's just awesome.
One can easily see how the more recent teen romance The Sun is Also a Star was modeled after this book with a more involved plot and multiple narrators. Nick and Norah, though, as well as their respective writers, are more badass.