Nicholas Sparks-The Notebook

The Most Popular Bestsellers Books - Romance - Nicholas Sparks's The Notebook Info, Plot Summary, Review and Nicholas Sparks Biography.

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Author: Nicholas Sparks

Book: The Notebook (239 Pgs.)

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A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn’t understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever.

Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories. . . until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again.

Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape.

Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments, and fundamental changes that affect us all. Shining with a beauty that is rarely found in current literature, The Notebook establishes Nicholas Sparks as a classic storyteller with a unique insight into the only emotion that really matters.

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Nicholas Sparks: The Notebook

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Nicholas Sparks: The Notebook - Review
Reviewed by Katharine M. Sparrow

When The Notebook came to the big screen, I thought it was just a movie – and it is. It’s a chick-flick romance that is unique only in that we get to see romance into the elderly years, when Alzheimer’s sets in and loved ones pray for even ten minutes a day of lucidity. It stars Ryan Gosling (Remember the Titans) and Rachel McAdams (Mean Girls), two actors who are able to bring a little magic into any sour film. Then I read the book by Nicholas Sparks –- a masterpiece that stuck with me long after I turned the last tear-covered page. The movie director, Nick Cassavetes (who also brought us Johnny Depp’s most embarrassingly bad film, The Astronaut’s Wife), could not have done justice to the novel by any means.

The first printing of The Notebook was in 1996, and it was one of Nicholas Spark’s first novels. Since then, the romantic genius has written A Walk to Remember, Dear John, and The Last Song, and you’ve no doubt heard of these as they, too, were made into movies this decade. The Notebook tells its story in retrospect. A man in his later years reads to an Alzheimer’s patient from an old notebook, reminding her of a romantic story she once knew, in order to bring her back to a lucid state. The story in the raggedy notebook is of two lovers, Allie and Noah, separated by World War II, who reunite seven years later. Allie has been engaged to another man during this time but needs to find peace with the first love she left behind. Unlike many romance novels, this book isn’t pulled along by sex – probably why it wasn’t much meant for the big screen. Instead, we are left wondering, “Who is this old woman being read to? Will she remember?” “Will the lovers in the notebook reunite after seven years apart, or will Allie keep her engagement?” and “Why didn’t I read this sooner?!”

If you thought men couldn’t write romance, you clearly haven’t stumbled into the world of Nicholas Sparks. His writing is beautiful in its truth. The characters are authentic, the plot is fantastic yet not unbelievable, and each scene flows smoothly together so we are able to understand a story told in pieces. Getting into the head of the characters was delightful. Sparks writes in a way that brings out the love, pain, and uncertainty that fuel his characters. When it rains in the book, the reader feels the chill and excitement of the downpour, and understands just how two people can fall in love as Allie and Noah do.

If the book were to be rewritten, the beginning would not be so rushed. The bulk of the story is told after WWII, in the days that Allie and Noah are brought together again after seven years. Readers are left thirsty for a sense of how things were when they first met, and the beginning of their love rather than the reunion of it. It is hard to imagine what sort of romance could last through seven years of separation, and Sparks would be most impressive if he were to let the reader feel it.

For those of you – and there are millions of you – that liked the movie The Notebook, pick up the book. You’ll see that a look inside the heads of the characters will show much more emotion and dilemma than the big screen ever can. For those of you that haven’t seen the movie yet but love romance, young or old, devour this novel. You’ll know exactly why I’m a Nicholas Sparks fan.

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