Book #34: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Title: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Author: Rachel Cohn, David Levithan

Here's the fifth book in my five-book omnibus review for my Creative Writing Theory class. As I've said before, I chose to focus on novels told from multiple points of view. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is significant because it's told from two points of view (Nick narrates the first chapter, then Norah picks up the story where he left off), and it's written by two separate authors. I'm interested in reading more about the writing process of the book. I assume that Levithan wrote the chapters from Nick's perspective and Cohn wrote the chapters from Norah's. It seems that they would have had to write the chapters in sequence with Levithan passing what he had written to Cohn. I wonder how this changed both the challenges of the writing process and spiced things up. I remember listening to an NPR story about a mystery novel co-written by several famous mystery writers, where each author would finish a chapter and then pass the project on to a friend. The authors joked about trying to muddy the waters for their friends down the writing line, making things incredibly complicated.

Anyway, I'm a little bit surprised at how seamless the book is. While Nick and Norah are definitely different characters, the overall style of the writing is similar enough that the transition from Nick to Norah doesn't feel jarring. I saw the film version of the book a few years ago, and I'm surprised (just like with Darkly Dreaming Dexter) at how much of Nick and Norah takes place in Nick and Norah's heads. The whole book takes place on the night that the two meet, and as they start to like each other, we get lots and lots about what they're thinking and feeling and how they're misinterpreting each others' actions. In the film version, I remember a lot more action and a lot less introspection.

Finally, I'm curious about how Nick and Norah would be classified and marketed in bookstores. Although the main characters are both high school seniors, and "straight-edge" (meaning that they don't smoke, drink, or do drugs), the book takes place in a series of (mostly gay) nightclubs where everyone around them is drunk and stoned, Norah has a serious pottymouth, and two chapters near the end are so lusty that I felt like I needed a cold shower after reading them.