The book was so frustratingly simple and obvious and laid out. I heard Nicholas Sparks had a knack for sap, but I almost drowned in it and felt no spark at all. I love the movie, but if you think that was sappy, do not pick up this book. 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."Īnd so begins one of the most poignant and compelling love stories you will ever read.The Notebook. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. "I am nothing special, of this I am sure. 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. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. 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. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. 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.Īllie 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. 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. 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. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love.Ī man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. The Notebook is a A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love.