Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
We’re back with anther book-movie double header as part of the Something Strange book club. Last month it was a weird Japanese horror-thriller1 and this month it’s steamy teen romance. But they do share something in common (this is clickbait keep reading to find out what).
It’s the way the narrative switches between the two protagonist’s perspectives. And the similarities end there. There’s no murder plot here, just the tale of two people who meet in a chance encounter, hit it off, and a blow by blow account of their falling in love through the evening and into the wee small hours.
I don’t know if there’s a music equivalent of name-dropping but this does that thing there it tries to define how cool the characters are by their eclectic tastes. It’s always a bit cringe and try-hard but perhaps it works for its target audience. I speak as someone who listens to any old shite, it does not make you a cool or interesting person.
The way the narrative kind of breezes along like a discount Before Sunrise2 worked for me, especially in a relatively short novel. If I’m honest, I found the characters hard to get on with. Perhaps this is a low blow but they seem like insufferable hipsters. Again I have to acknowledge that this book was not written for me.
We’re in spoiler territory now but for a book about cool kids doing cool things it does strike me as oddly puritanical. Like, having a fucking drink if you want to, you don’t have to be black out drunk. Have a shag if you want to, who cares? I guess this is why I don’t write young adult novels.
It leaves me very curious to watch the film given that ‘Nick and Nora’ are the two lead characters from The Thin Man3 series of films. Those two really do have chemistry together, and it kind of rubs me the wrong way that the authors would want to borrow those names assuming their characters are just as funny.