Even though I’d read and enjoyed Nicholas Sparks’ book “A Walk to Remember”, as well as the movie with the same title, I’d never read “The Notebook” or seen the movie, though I’d intended to do so. With the book arriving at our church’s book exchange, I decided it was the time to give this one a read.
As was the case for “A Walk to Remember” the book is written in the first person using the character of Duke, a man in a nursing home who reads a story to a woman in the home from the notebook of the title.
The story within a story is that of Allie, a well off young woman who is weeks away from her wedding day to a hardworking man who she does love, Lon, yet she never got over her first love, Noah, who she decided to visit after having not seen him in 14 years.
Nicholas writes as a person who understands men and women equally well. Though we get to know Noah much more than Lon, it is a convincing argument that she could find love and happiness with either if willing to forget the other completely. Still, her choice is choreographed pretty early as one of them is described as having more positive traits and their interactions are more positive and romantic.
Nicholas spends a lot of time on physical descriptions of places and I admittedly started skimming at them and other places. This is a somewhat modest story in that only one physical love scene is described with any real detail. I could see myself recommending this to our child, if we have a daughter, when she is in her teens.
The ending had a few twists, yet felt a bit abrupt, even open to questions, a fault which I understand is not the case of the movie.
Rating – four baby booties out of five
Over 40 First Time Mom 