Review Novel (The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks)
“I am nothing
special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led
a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be
forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this
has always been enough..”
The Notebook is a
1996 romantic novel by American novelist Nicholas Sparks, based
on a true story. The novel was later adapted into a popular film of the
same name, in 2004. This was Nicholas Sparks' first published novel. It
was the third written after The Passing and The Royal Murders, which he
did not publish. He wrote it over a period of six months in 1994. Literary
agent Theresa Park discovered Sparks by picking the book out of her
agency's slush pile and reading it. Park offered to represent him. In
October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for the book from the Time
Warner Book Group, and the novel was published in October 1997. It was
on The New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of
release. The Notebook was a hardcover best seller for more
than a year.In interviews, Sparks said he was inspired to write the novel by
the grandparents of his wife, who had been married for more than 60 years when
he met them. In The Notebook, he tried to express the long romantic
love of that couple.
The
novel opens with Noah Calhoun, an old man, reading to a woman in a nursing
home. He tells her the following story:
Noah, 31, returns from World War
II to his town of New Bern, North Carolina. He finishes restoring
an antebellum-style house, after his father's death. Meanwhile Allie, 29,
sees the house in the newspaper and decides to pay him a visit.
They are meeting, again, after a 14-year
separation, which followed their brief but passionate summer romance when her
family was visiting the town. They were separated by class, as she was the
daughter of a wealthy family, and he worked as a laborer in a lumberyard.
Seeing each other brings on a flood of memories and strong emotions in both of
them. They have dinner together and talk about their lives and the past. Allie
learns that Noah had written letters to her for one year after their breakup.
She realizes that her mother hid the letters so that Allie could never receive
them and would conclude that Noah had forgotten about her. They talk about what
could have happened between them without her mother's interference. At the end
of the night, Noah invites Allie to come back the next day and promises her a
surprise. She decides to see him again. During this time, her fiancé, Lon,
tries to reach her at the hotel. When Allie does not respond to his calls, he
begins to worry.
The next day, Noah takes Allie on a canoe
ride in a small lake where swans and geese swim. She is enchanted. On their way
back, they are caught in a storm and end up soaked. When they return to his
house, they talk again about how important they were to each other, and how
their feelings have not changed. Noah and Allie share a kiss and make love.
Allie's mother shows up the next morning
and gives Allie the letters from Noah. When her mother leaves, Allie is torn
and has a decision to make. She knows she loves Noah, but she does not want to
hurt Lon. Noah begs her to stay with him, but she decides to leave. She cries
all the way back to the hotel and starts reading the letters her mother
returned to her. At the hotel, her fiancé Lon is waiting in the lobby.
The man stops reading the story at this
point, and tells the reader that he is reading to his wife, who suffers
from Alzheimer's disease and does not recognize him. He explains that
he is also ill, battling a third cancer, and suffering heart disease, kidney
failure, and severe arthritis in his hands.
He resumes reading the story and
describing their life together: her career as a noted painter, their children,
growing old together, and finally the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. He had changed
the names in the story to protect her, but he is Noah and she is Allie. They
walk together and Allie, although she does not recognize him, says she might
feel something for him.
That night they have dinner together.
Referring to the story, she says that she thinks Allie chose Noah. Recognizing
her husband, she tells him that she loves him. They embrace and talk, but after
almost four hours, Allie fades. She begins to panic and hallucinate. She
forgets who Noah is again. A week later, after he had a stroke and recovered,
Noah goes to Allie's room at night to see her. She remembered who he was,
despite the Alzheimer's, and she says that she had missed Noah.
The
reader will be overcome with emotion as this relationship unfolds and the
missing pieces of Noah and Allie's story are revealed in the notebook he
carries with him. Intensely romantic and a tribute to the power of true love,
"The Notebook" will leave you emotionally spent and thankful to be so.
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be
really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that
because I want you. I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day. Will
you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from
now, 40 years from now? What’s it look like? If it’s with him, go. Go! I lost
you once, I think I can do it again. If I thought that’s what you really
wanted. But don’t you take the easy way out.” –The Notebook.
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