Genre: Fiction—Romance
Completed: 5 April 2011
Summary & Review:
Noah, an elderly man living in a nursing home, reads a tattered notebook to his wife every day. The notebook holds the story of their love—their summer romance as teenagers, their separation, and then finally their reunion after more than a decade apart. More than just a tale of two people’s romance, however, the story seems to contain hidden power. As Noah reads the story to Allie, it brings his wife back from the clutches of her Alzheimer’s disease which has robbed her of her memory.
This was Nicholas Sparks’ first novel and I think it showed. Every time he would have the characters express their feelings, either in dialogue or letters, it was done in the most clichéd, trite terms. Throughout the book, Sparks spoke of poetry ad nauseam, yet his words were paradoxically completely un-poetic.
It most cases the old truism stands, i.e. that the book is better than the movie. With The Notebook, however, the movie was much better than the literary tale. Sparks’ novel was slow in pace, convoluted in structure, and overwrought throughout.
Rating: 4.0
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