I don’t know why it took me so long to read Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist because it’s been one of my favourite movies for a long time, and David Levithan is one of my favourite authors. Everything about it screamed ‘read me now,’ however it’s been sat on my shelf for a few years. I picked it up on whim, figuring i could use a refresher of the story i love so much.
Title: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Author: David Levithan & Rachel Cohn
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Publication Date: August 2007
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Pages: 183
Summary: Nick and Norah are both suffering from broken hearts. So when Nick sees the girl who dumped him walk in with a new guy he asks the strange girl next to him to be his girlfriend for the next five minutes.
Norah would do anything to avoid conversation with the not-friend girl who dumped Nick, and get over the Evil Ex whom Norah never quite broke up with. And so she agrees.
What follows is an epic first date between two people who are just trying to figure out who they want to be – and where the next great band is playing.
Overall, i found the story line to be quite different from the movie, however i don’t have an opinion whether it’s a good or bad change. I feel like the book focused a lot more on the relationship of Nick and Norah, whereas the movie builds up their relationship as they run around the city together in search of their favourite band. A lot of the aspects of character and their relationship were already set up in the book. I however appreciated the focus of the music in the book. I rarely read books that have stories based on music, so it was a nice change to be in the world of teenagers who live and breathe for music. I really enjoyed that aspect.
I also still adore Nick and Norah’s characters. It’s hard to imagine them as anyone but the actors, however they seemed quite different from the characters in the movie. Once again, it wasn’t really a welcome or unwelcome change.
One of the reasons i realised i enjoyed this book so much is that it seems to be much more ‘adult’ than the movie portrays. There’s a lot of intimate sex references, A LOT of swearing and the characters seem a lot older than i remember them. I’d personally say that this novel is probably aimed at more New Adult than Young Adult and i really did enjoy the refreshing change that offered.
With all of Rachel Cohn’s and David Levithan’s work, the chapters were from the point of view of each main character. I appreciated the way the beginning of each chapter overlapped a little, giving you a slightly different point of view on a situation from both characters, i really like it when authors take time to add that little bit more detail in.
My one critism is the same as it is with all of these two authors work together. I really struggle to get in to the story. I always end up enjoying the stories they release together and appreciate the outcome, however it takes me a long time to make sense of what is going on. In some places it becomes very fast paced and ‘wordy’ and you lose track of what’s going on, what characters doing what and where they are. It then takes a few pages to right yourself. It gives way to a very chatty style of writing which i really enjoy, however would like to be so immersed in the story that i do know what’s happening when i’m reading.
I don’t think i will every hate a book that David Levithan has participated in writing. I have always enjoyed his parts of novels and he writes so passionately and so uniquely that he manages to create whole new characters each time he writes. I feel like that’s difficult for some authors with so many books out there on shelves.
The Little Contemporary Corner 