The Notebook: Summary and book reviews of The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, plus links to an excerpt from The Notebook and a biography of Nicholas Sparks.
The Notebook
by Nicholas Sparks
Hardcover: Oct 1996,
214 pages.
Paperback: Dec 1999,
226 pages.
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 the 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 the 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.
"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."
And so begins one of the most poignant and compelling love stories you will ever read...The Notebook
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Sparks's debut is a contender in the Robert Waller book sweeps for most shamelessly sentimental love story, with honorable mention for highest octane schmaltz throughout an extended narrative.....An epic of treacle, an ocean of tears, made possible by a perfect, ideal, unalloyed absence of humor. Destined, positively, for success.
Booklist - Joanne Wilkinson
If you want to read a novel in which the romance is grounded in something real, and the magic is truly magical, read the work of Alice Hoffman. If you want to read an upscale Harlequin romance with great crossover appeal, then read The Notebook.
Publishers Weekly
Early on, Noah claims that theirs may be either a tragedy or a love story, depending on the perspective. Ultimately, the judgment is up to readers be they cynics or romantics. For the latter, this will be a weeper.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Jacinda The Notebook Review The notebook is a love story by Nicholas Sparks. It’s told in many different ways; when they are old, teenagers, and in their 30’s. It’s about a young girl named Allie, who comes from a very wealthy, and some would say stuck up, family who falls in... Read More
Rated of 5
by Sarah Marie Real Treat! (: I love this book ! It was unbelievably good! Nicholas Sparks knows how to pull on his readers emotions. i end up the same way for all his books, crying. he has great talent and i hope that he doesn't give up on his AMAZING talent. KEEP WRITING... Read More
War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, exploring how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths.
Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants, Margaret Powell's classic memoir of her time in service is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high.
Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker's Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.
I read The Healing in two sittings it is a fascinating story of plantation life at the beginning of the Civil War. Granada, a slave newborn child...
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by Jacinda
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by Sarah Marie
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