In honor of the time frame in Nick/Nora, I read the novel in one sitting. I felt just as tired (but pleased and happy) when I closed the book after midnight as they did when Nora jumped over that turnstile. Kind of like I created my own *sense around* experience or something.
And you can never go wrong when a love story ends with the pair hopping on a train . Lucky Jim, anyone? A top favorite of mine by Kingsley Amis.
Some thoughts on the book, in terms of its place in the current realm of YAL:
Were the two main characters straight-edge, I wonder, in order to make the book less controversial, or was it more of a plot device? One just would not have the stamina to stay out all night AND be coherent if they drank too. Just look at Caroline. N/N could not end with them passed out in a van, right?
Cohn gets credit for being edgy and realistic enough to depict teenage drinking, but not via any characters that readers will emotionally connect with.
Cohn did a fantastic job including homosexual teens interspersed with the heterosexual main characters. I appreciated how blended this world--with punk music connecting them- was.
As for Seventeenth Summer--(by the way, Maureen Daly just died last September) I was struck by how similar these four characters were as far as their depth of feelings for one another. Just goes to show that either way, adults should take teens seriously no matter what kind of relationship they are in (in terms of how sexually active they are). It's all legit, and all very, very real.
I think the main differences in two novels have more to so with the language. 17th Summer was so languid and sensual with the intensively descriptive passages depicting nature. Especially in the beginning, when Angie has begun to realize how different she feels--and how it must be because she is in love for the first time.
Reminded me of a Noel Coward lyric about a man describing how he was falling in love:
"Something very strange is happening to me/every cat I see seems to be purring/
and every single leaf/ on every tree/seems to be aware/of something in the air
N/N was also very internal, but used sparser language. But then again, although both books have limited time frames, Daly's takes place over a long hot summer, but Cohn's is just one brief night in Spring.
Both were lovely first time reads for me, personnaly.
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Good job on the comparison. One thing I thought about as I read the post is how teens of today would react to 17th Summer. I'm thinking it's not worth having on library shelves - even as a classic. A teen who is interested in N/N, what would they think about SS?
You said a lot about how Rachel got Norah correctly? What about how David did with Nick?
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