Being a 13 almost 14 year old and feeling like you don’t fit in is the worst feeling in the world, but if you find the right music…music that makes you feel alive and free, as it connects you to the deepest part of yourself AND you fall in love…being considered a weirdo ceases to be a restraint on your happiness and your sense of belonging.
Chipped Black Nail Polish is the terse retelling of Nicholas Tanek’s wild, fun yet dangerous, New Jersey Hard Core Summer in 1989, between 8th and 9th grade when he meets Kim who is mentioned in his first book The Coolest Way to Kill Yourself. Although mention of her was brief in that story, I remember thinking, “I want to know more about THAT girl and THAT relationship…”
My own heart skipped a beat as I read about the fated moment Nicholas met Kim while he sifted through vinyl records in a music store. I even swooned a little reading how he fell in love for the first time with her, the girl who introduced to him to the coolest parts of who he is, thus starting his epic love affair with the Punk-Rock Music way of life.
I related to how easy it was for Nicholas to fall head over heels with Kim especially when she told him not to. I even found myself cheering him on while he believed with his whole heart that he could be the one to save her from despair and help her heal all of her wounds. That is, how teenagers approach love after all.
Kim introduced Nicholas to a set of friends who were quirky, yet conventional to each other. Each is written and portrayed as multi-layered characters with beautiful flaws and hardships that adults couldn’t or simply wouldn’t even try to understand: I laughed out loud. No, I cackled out loud when Nicholas’s friend Kevin joins him on the scene. I can honestly say they one-upped me as the Grand Master of the crank call. My eyes filled with tears, when his friends Di and Quintin reminded me of a time, not so long ago, before the internet and way before social media, when the world was less accepting of gays and lesbians than it is now and how racism and racial slurs was an accepted form of bullying.
I’ve had to read this story twice so I could digest my own emotional memories of how I once felt about being the odd girl out and then finding a group of kids who embraced and accepted me.
Nicholas Tanek’s nostalgic memories and references to things like mixed tapes, Aqua Net hairspray (I still keep a jumbo can under my bathroom sink) sneaking out to meet a teenage love, epic crank calls as an art form and MTV’s 120 minutes woke up my inner teenager and thrust me right back into the memory of the craziness I once (or twice) disguised as the magic of summer love. This quick read/adventurous story made me miss the thrill of climbing out of a second story window to go meet a boy in the middle of the night and not get caught while I rekindled my love of what others thought was out of touch music.
Once again, (as he did in his first book) Nicholas Tanek proves that, everything that glitters may not be gold but the spark we see in someone we love is just as, if not more stunning and valuable than the actual precious metal.
What I find interesting is at the heart of this self proclaimed “weirdo”, is a Knight—in what appears to be tarnished armor, a hero, a sort-of-savior with a kind heart, and a lover.
The best thing I have learned from Nicholas via his writing is: sometimes, we need to see the imperfect beauty in another when nobody else does, so we can learn to embrace our own beautiful selves when the world fails to look our way.
“Nick, the Cupid of NJHC” ~Di
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2015
Top reviews from other countries
- JoanneReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2015
it was being cool, it was being a weirdo
- Kes CallawayReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2015
Fantastic book... blew me away!!!
