Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, May 24, 2006
Before I start the story that is Nick and Norah, I decided we needed to get some misconceptions out of the way first.
1) I don't live in Manhattan, so I won't understand what the characters are talking about. Wrong! I don't live in Manhattan--actually, I've never been farther East than Ohio, but I still got the gist of the story quite easily. Sure, I might never have visited Times Square, but I've been on the Square in my hometown (population 3,400), and the same types of things went on there that go on in New York.
2) This book is full of cursing. Right! And if you haven't heard a lot of curse words (do I really need to spell them out?), especially from the mouths of teens, in the last twenty years or so, I'm guessing you live on a commune somewhere in the middle of Utah.
3) This book only covers one night. Right again! And oh, what a night it is! One night, filled with all the ups, downs, and sideways that being a teen in todays world brings.
Now that we've got that out of the way, we can concentrate on the story. It's about Nick, a bassist for a band with an ever-changing name, who recently had his heart broken by a b***h named Tris. It's about Norah, an uber-complicated girl with more issues than The National Enquirer, who not too long ago had her virginity broken by Tal. And then there's Caroline, and Jessie, and Uncle Lou, not to mention Dev and Thom, and Randy from Are You Randy?, and Hunter from Hunter. There's beer, and there's drugs, and there's sex, although none of it is Nick or Norah's.
There's heartbreak, and devastation, and lust, and forgiveness, and acceptance. There's parents to deal with, and friends to attempt to deal with, and a boy and a girl who wish that, just once, they could be themselves and not deal at all. There's a love story, and a song about a girl on a street in the middle of the night, and a band that just might make it big, and a car that won't start, and a subway ride that requires jumping the turnstyle.
There's love, and anger, and disappointment, and desperation, and redemption. There's life, and then there's Nick and Norah. There's a story here, and you need to read it.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptional book, April 11, 2007
I'm not a teen (and I can't say as I miss being one), but I recently read Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan and loved it. It's gritty, fast-paced, angst-ridden without being whiny, and full of fun facts about pop music from several decades.
The characters of this book are vivid, the timeline oh-so-brief, and each scene so well-constructed that despite the fact that it's not a long book, it is completely fulfilling. It approaches the lives, interests, and concerns of teens today from a much more contemporary viewpoint than I've read in any other books (for instance, private versus public schooling, alcohol and drug use, homosexuality, my car's a piece of crap ...) . The true beauty to the book, though, is that the authors have pared all of the language down to the necessities instead of cluttering it up. It was fast read for all that it was thought-provoking, and although I doubt most young readers have any idea about the original Nick and Nora, I think Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is definitely worth their time.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book for Everyone Who Has Ever Fallen in Love, February 14, 2007
This book is great! Yes, it's set in the late night music/club scene in New York. But that's not what it's about. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is about what it feels like to meet that special someone, and be interested right away, while having doubts, and baggage, and difficulties that get in the way. All compressed into a zany time period of one very long night. It reminded me a little bit of the movie Dazed and Confused, and I can totally see it working as a movie.
Through the alternating chapters, we explore this falling in love from both sides. We see each person's doubts, and how the other is perceiving him or her at the same time. It's a bit confusing sometimes - I had to stop and think "who's talking now?", because both narratives are written in the first person. But mostly it works.
I wouldn't recommend this title for younger kids, or for people who are easily offended by profanity or sex. The "f" word features very prominently, and there are some pretty overt (though not not unduly graphic) sexual references. And yet, if you can get past that, the two main characters are actually quite straight-laced. They don't drink, they don't do drugs, and they both want stable, monogamous relationships. I think that the language is the authors' way of keeping Nick and Norah, especially Nick, from being too good to be true.
There's poetry in some of the text, too. And not just when Nick or Norah is thinking about song lyrics. Here is an early throwaway line describing Nick shifting gears from performer to person taking down band equipment: "I go from chords to cords, amped to amps." And here's Norah, musing on her own upbringing:
"My parents have also done me the misfortune of being happily married for a quarter century, which no doubt dooms my own prospects of ever experiencing true love. Gold is not struck twice."
I love that. "Gold is not struck twice." There's also David's description of moving through the crowd at a club, holding Norah's hand:
"The crowd is pressing in on us and the bassline is revealing everything and we are two people who are part of a lot more people, and at the same time we're our own part. There isn't loneliness, only this intense twoliness."
I love that, too. "Twoliness." The language aside, what makes this book special is the way that the authors are able to capture those feelings and insecurities that teenagers have when they first fall for each other, especially the feeling of euphoria. I could cite dozens of examples. But I'll limit myself to three:
"Nick stands up and offers me his hand. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet, then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer and I'm Julie Andrews and we're dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. (Norah, page 55)"
"If Caroline was here, she'd give me her Patience, Grasshopper speech. But she's not, and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention? (Norah, page 68)"
"No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. (Nick, page 156)"
While most aren't as fully fleshed out as Nick and Norah, several of the other characters are intriguing. Tris, Nick's painfully recent ex-girlfriend, turns out to be more multi-dimensional than she seems at first. Norah's dad is a high-powered record executive, but also reveals himself to be a caring father and loving husband. There's also a cross-dressing Playboy bunny/bouncer and a gay playboy band member who each offer words of wisdom to Nick. One thing that I really like about this book is the way that the sexuality of the gay and cross-dressing characters is treated completely matter-of-factly by both Nick and Norah.
So, here's what I have to say about Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. It doesn't matter if you're not into music, or you aren't interested in the New York club scene. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, gay or straight. If you've ever met someone and been interested in them from the first glance, or if you've ever wondered what it would be like to meet someone and click right away, you should read this book. It's a perfect read for young adults. And for the censors who might fear that the language in the book will be a bad influence on kids, I say, "they have heard these words before." And maybe the straight-laced, non-drinking Nick and Norah, high on meeting each other, will have a positive influence instead.
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