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Reviews of The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

The Notebook

by Nicholas Sparks

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Romance/Love Stories
N & S Carolina
1940s & '50s

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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. An achingly tender story about the enduring power of love.

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

Chapter One: Miracles

Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end? The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life gone by. I'm a sight this morning: two shirts, heavy pants, a scarf wrapped twice around my neck and tucked into a thick sweater knitted by my daughter thirty birthdays ago. The thermostat in my room is set as high as it will go, and a smaller space heater sits directly behind me. It clicks and groans and spews hot air like a fairytale dragon, and still my body shivers with a cold that will never go away, a cold that has been eighty years in the making. Eighty years, I think sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my age, it still amazes me that I haven't been warm since George Bush was president. I wonder if this is how it is for everyone my age. My life? It isn't easy to explain. It has not been the rip-roaring spectacular I fancied it would be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. I suppose it...

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THE NOTEBOOK

by Nicholas Sparks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 1996

An epic of treacle, an ocean of tears, made possible by a perfect, ideal, unalloyed absence of humor. Destined, positively,...

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.

New Bern is the Carolina town where local boy Noah Calhoun and visitor Allison Nelson fall in love, in 1932, when Noah is 17 and Allie 15 ("as he...met those striking emerald eyes, he knew...she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but never find again''). Allie's socially prominent mom, however, sees their Romeo-and-Juliet affair differently, intercepting Noah's heartrendingly poetic love-letters, while Allie, sure he doesn't love her, never even sends hers. Love is forever, though, and in 1946 Allie sees a piece in the paper about Noah (he's back home after WW II, still alone, living in a 200-year-old house in the country) and drives down to see him, telling the socially prominent lawyer she's engaged to that she's gone looking for antiques ("'And here it will end, one way or the other,' she whispered''). And together again the lovers come indeed, during a thunderstorm, before a crackling fire, leaving the poetic Noah to reflect that "to him, the evening would be remembered as one of the most special times he had ever had.'' So, will Allie marry her lawyer? Will Noah live out his life alone, rocking on his porch, paddling up the creek, "playing his guitar for beavers and geese and wild blue herons''? Suffice it to say that love will go on, somehow, for 140 more pages, readers will find out what the title means and may or may not agree with Allie, of Noah: "You are the most forgiving and peaceful man I know. God is with you, He must be, for you are the closest thing to an angel that I've ever met.''

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1996

ISBN: 0-446-52080-2

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Warner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996

HISTORICAL FICTION

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What Critics Say About ‘The Notebook’ Musical

SEEN & HEARD

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas . She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Heather Morris

by Heather Morris

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The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Title: The Notebook

Author: Nicholas Sparks

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Genre: Romance Fiction

First Publication: 1996

Language: English

Major Characters: Allie Hamilton, Noah, Jr., Lon Hammond, Anne Hamilton, Dr. Barnwell

Setting Place: North Carolina

Narration: First Person (in first and last chapters), Third Person

Theme: Love Conquers All, Fate Vs Free Will,

Book Summary: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Set amid the austere beauty of the North Carolina coast , The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner recently returned from the Second World War . Noah 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.

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. It is a story of miracles and emotions that will stay with you forever.

Book Review: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Allison Hamilton, now 29 years old, can’t seem to shake away her first love, Noah Calhoun. Torn between her fiancé Lon and her soul mate Noah, Allie must make a decision that won’t be easy and faces the danger of breaking one of these man’s hearts. Nicholas Sparks writes a jaw-dropping, passionate romance novel that will have you wanting more. If you aren’t a fan of romance stories, start here and read this captivating novel The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

It all started that summer when Allie was only 15; she met Noah- a low class 17 year old filled with life and enthusiasm- and they immediately clicked. Infatuated with love, this young couple did everything together and they were never apart. They had high hopes of being together, raising a family and growing old with each other. Even though they had their differences at times, they still were there for each other.

“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.”

Unfortunately, Allie had to go back home and leave Noah behind. Heartbroken, Allie missed Noah and thought about him all the time. Noah was sad and missed Allie terribly. He wrote letters to Allie-one each day- but all of them were left unanswered. Allie’s mother had purposely taken them, without informing Allie. She didn’t think Noah was right for Allie and referred to him as “trash.” Years passed and both of them had not heard from each other but they still had tremendous love for one another.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks will make you fall even more in love with love stories. If you are not a fan of romance stories then The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks is definitely what you need. From the second you pick up this book to the second you put it down, it will change the way you look at love and make you desire it. Nicholas Spark paints us a beautiful picture of the obstacles and the wonderful things that loves offers.

“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”

Nicholas Spark’s unique writing will have you fighting back tears and wishing for a relationship just like the one that is shared between Noah and Allie. This heart warming novel had me on the edge of my seat, not wanting to put the book down. I anxiously turned each page waiting to see what became of Allie and Noah.

The Notebook is a timeless love story that captures the essence of enduring romance. Set against the backdrop of 1940s North Carolina, the novel follows the passionate yet turbulent relationship between Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson, two young lovers torn apart by social class and familial expectations. Sparks masterfully interweaves their heart-wrenching past with their poignant present, where Noah attempts to revive Allie’s fading memory through the power of their love story. With its tender moments and heartbreaking sacrifices, The Notebook is a beautifully written tale that celebrates the resilience of true love and the unbreakable bonds it can forge.

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'The Notebook" cuts between the same couple at two seasons in their lives. We see them in the urgency of young romance, and then we see them as old people, she disappearing into the shadows of Alzheimer's, he steadfast in his love. It is his custom every day to read to her from a notebook that tells the story of how they met and fell in love and faced obstacles to their happiness. Sometimes, he says, if only for a few minutes, the clouds part and she is able to remember who he is and who the story is about.

We all wish Alzheimer's could permit such moments. For a time, in the earlier stages of the disease, it does. But when the curtain comes down, there is never another act and the play is over. "The Notebook" is a sentimental fantasy, but such fantasies are not harmful; we tell ourselves stories every day, to make life more bearable. The reason we cried during " Terms of Endearment " was not because the mother was dying, but because she was given the opportunity for a dignified and lucid parting with her children. In life it is more likely to be pain, drugs, regret and despair.

The lovers are named Allie Nelson and Noah Calhoun, known as Duke. As old people they're played by Gena Rowlands and James Garner . As young people, by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling . The performances are suited to the material, respecting the passion at the beginning and the sentiment at the end, but not pushing too hard; there is even a time when young Noah tells Allie, "I don't see how it's gonna work," and means it, and a time when Allie gets engaged to another man.

She's a rich kid, summering at the family's mansion in North Carolina. He's a local kid who works at the sawmill but is smart and poetic. Her parents are snobs. His father ( Sam Shepard ) is centered and supportive. Noah loves her the moment he sees her, and actually hangs by his hands from a bar on a Ferris wheel until she agrees to go out with him. Her parents are direct: "He's trash. He's not for you." One day her mother ( Joan Allen ) shows her a local working man, who looks hard-used by life, and tells Allie that 25 years ago she was in love with him. Allie thinks her parents do not love each other, but her mother insists they do; still, Allen is such a precise actress that she is able to introduce the quietest note of regret into the scene.

The movie is based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks , whose books inspired "Message in a Bottle" (1999), unloved by me, and " A Walk to Remember " (2002), which was so sweet and positive it persuaded me (as did Mandy Moore as its star). Now here is a story that could have been a tearjerker, but -- no, wait, it is a tearjerker, it's just that it's a good one. The director is Nick Cassavetes , son of Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes , and perhaps his instinctive feeling for his mother helped him find the way past soap opera in the direction of truth.

Ryan Gosling has already been identified as one of the best actors of his generation, although usually in more hard-edged material. Rachel McAdams, who just a few months ago was the bitchy high school queen in " Mean Girls ," here shows such beauty and clarity that we realize once again how actors are blessed by good material. As for Gena Rowlands and James Garner: They are completely at ease in their roles, never striving for effect, never wanting us to be sure we get the message. Garner is an actor so confident and sure that he makes the difficult look easy, and loses credit for his skill. Consider how simply and sincerely he tells their children: "Look, guys, that's my sweetheart in there." Rowlands, best-known for high-strung, even manic characters, especially in films by her late husband, here finds a quiet vulnerability that is luminous.

The photography by Robert Fraisse is striking in its rich, saturated effects, from sea birds at sunset to a dilapidated mansion by candlelight to the texture of Southern summer streets. It makes the story seem more idealized; certainly the retirement home at the end seems more of heaven than of earth.

And the old mansion is underlined, too, first in its decay and then in its rebirth; young Noah is convinced that if he makes good on his promise to rebuild it for Allie, she will come to live in it with him, and paint in the studio he has made for her. ("Noah had gone a little mad," the notebook says.) That she is engaged to marry another shakes him but doesn't discourage him.

We have recently read much about Alzheimer's because of the death of Ronald Reagan. His daughter Patti Davis reported that just before he died, the former president opened his eyes and gazed steadily into those of Nancy, and there was no doubt that he recognized her.

Well, it's nice to think so. Nice to believe the window can open once more before closing forever.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Notebook (2004)

Rated PG-13 for some sexuality

123 minutes

Rachel McAdams as Young Allie Nelson

Joan Allen as Allie's Mother

Heather Wahlquist as Sara Tuffington

Gena Rowlands as Allie Nelson

James Garner as Noah Calhoun

Ryan Gosling as Young Noah Calhoun

Sylvia Jefferies as Rosemary

Nancy De Mayo as Mary Allen Calhoun

Directed by

Nick Cassavetes
Jeremy Leven

Based on the novel by

Nicholas Sparks

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The Notebook

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Watch The Notebook with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

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It's hard not to admire its unabashed sentimentality, but The Notebook is too clumsily manipulative to rise above its melodramatic clichés.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Nick Cassavetes

Ryan Gosling

Noah Calhoun

Rachel McAdams

Allie Hamilton

James Garner

Gena Rowlands

Allie Calhoun

James Marsden

The Notebook

Self-Purchased copy

Nicholas Sparks

Penguin Books

Romance , number of pages.

“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. ”

In the story, Noah, a poor young man, falls in love with Allie, an upper-class girl, but her parents disapprove of their relationship, which breaks the couple apart.

The Notebook begins with an eighty-year-old man describing the most remarkable part of his life. The story then moves on to Noah and Allie when happenstance brought them together one summer. Then they never met for 14 years until one afternoon, Allie decides to visit Noah to tell him she is engaged to Lon. Or was that just a reason to see her first love once more. Noah is then sure he wants her back, but can Ellie stay back?

This book highlights the power of true love and companionship. The story was not very special for me; what makes this book unique is the narrative by an old Noah. Riddled with arthritis and living in a senior home, his passion has only grown not diminished. His fierce determination for his first love makes the tale so poetic and heart-touching.

The book makes you nostalgic about two beautiful themes, poetry and letter writing. The poems are so sweet, and adorable and they agree with the context. But the letter writing is meant for a good cry. Its beauty has been captured brilliantly.

So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday." — Nicholas Sparks ( The Notebook )

Other Books by Nicholas Sparks

Another thing I liked that Nicholas Sparks considered is the length of the book. It’s a quick read. One-night read; It’s suitable for readers who have less time on their hands and yet want to get lost in a good story.

The writing is easy, straightforward and the cliff-hanger in the story pivoting back to current-times is just amazing. This makes the writing gripping. I love Noah and Allie too; the will she, won’t she suspense just had me turning pages. I was angry at Allie one time. I felt like she was using Noah but realized that I would have been more twisted than her in her place. The characters felt so real.

Didn't Like

I am unhappy only about one thing. The book I have, the story covers only 70% of it. The rest of the pages are about Nicholas Sparks, his upcoming books, chapters from his popular books, etc. I feel cheated. That’s all.

Final Verdict

I award one star each to the story, the realistic characters, the lovely poetry, the forever kind-of bitter-sweet ending, and the tale's length to make it 5 stars worthy. No doubt.

Who Should Read This and Who Shouldn't

Romance readers looking for a clean, elegant story should definitely read this. If you’re looking for steamy, sexy romance, you might not enjoy this. But otherwise, young and old alike and enjoy this light read immensely.

If you don’t get emotional during the movie or reading the book, you’ll most certainly cry at the end of the story.

Happy Reading!

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Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved storytellers. All of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, with over 105 million copies sold worldwide, in more than 50 languages, including over 75 million copies in the United States alone. Sparks wrote one of his best-known stories, The Notebook , over a period of six months at age 28. It was published in 1996 and he followed with the novels Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding (2003), True Believer (2005) and its sequel, At First Sight (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010), The Best of Me (2011), The Longest Ride (2013), See Me (2015), Two by Two (2016) and Every Breath (2018) as well as the 2004 non-fiction memoir Three Weeks With My Brother , co-written with his brother Micah. His twenty-first novel, The Return , will be published on September 29, 2020. Film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels, including The Choice , The Longest Ride , The Best of Me , Safe Haven (on all of which he served as a producer), The Lucky One , Message in a Bottle , A Walk to Remember , The Notebook , Nights in Rodanthe , Dear John and The Last Song , have had a cumulative worldwide gross of over three-quarters of a billion dollars. The Notebook is also being adapted into a musical, featuring music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson.

Sparks lives in North Carolina. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. He co-founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina in 2006. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the notebook.

When author Nicholas Sparks sat down to write THE NOTEBOOK, a tender love story inspired by the enduring relationship of his wife Cathy's grandparents, he wanted his readers to walk away with a renewed spirit of hope.

"I'll never forget watching those two people flirt," he recalls. "I mean, you don't see that very often. They'd been married 67 years, and yet they still loved each other. I wanted to write a book about that kind of love. I wanted people to know that unconditional love does exist."

So Sparks created THE NOTEBOOK, the simple story of Noah Calhoun, a soft spoken North Carolina outdoorsman who carried his love for the willowy Allie Nelson with him long after their youthful romance had ended. He paralleled Noah's silent passions with Allie's haunting thoughts --- feelings she could not escape even after she became engaged to another man. He asked his readers to consider what it might mean if these relatively happy, middle-aged people found their destinies once again overlapped.

He presented a question all but universal in appeal: What would happen if two people were given a second chance at the love of a lifetime?

Sparks deftly answers that question. But it's the inspiration drawn from his real life grandparents that makes THE NOTEBOOK more than just a novel of flames reignited. The novel opens and closes with an elderly Noah Calhoun reading aloud from his personal journals and "notebooks." And as he shares the delicate details, the good with the bad, it's clear he is as enchanted with Allie in old age as he was on the day they met.

"And that's the legacy of THE NOTEBOOK," according to Nicholas Sparks. "When love is real, it doesn't matter what turns the road takes. When love is real, the joys and possibilities are endless."

Reviewed by Kelly Milner Halls on February 1, 2004

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Publication Date: February 1, 2004
Genres: Fiction , Romance
Mass Market Paperback: 239 pages
Publisher: Warner Books
ISBN-10: 0446605239
ISBN-13: 9780446605236

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‘The Notebook’ Review: Broadway Musical of the Popular Romance Hits All-Too-Familiar Notes

By Frank Rizzo

Frank Rizzo

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Musical theater can be a sucker for a romantic tale, whether it’s about obsessive devotion, idealized passion, or lost loves. “ The Notebook ,” based on Nicholas Sparks ‘ bestselling, 1996 debut novel, has elements of all three — but they’re thinly rendered here in this Hallmark movie of a musical, awash in sentimentality and drenched in wistful longings and wish fulfillment.

The huge fanbase of the romance novel and the 2004 hit film might initially boost the box office, but it will take more than recreating that iconic rainstorm to win over other theatergoers looking for more than clichés, tropes and triggers.

Popular on Variety

She’s a rich girl on summer vacation. He’s a poor local boy. She thinks he’s cute and he thinks she’s pretty. They fall instantly in love but her parents whisk the girl back home before things go much further. (Too late.)

Each thinks the other has forgotten the other and years go by. But just before her wedding to nice-guy lawyer Lon (Chase Del Ray) she decides to return to the place where it all began after seeing a newspaper article about a house he has spent years fixing up — and, as it turns out, pining for her all the while.

But to be invested in an endless love an audience has to first believe in it. In the script by Bekah Brunstetter (“This is Us”), there’s no “Titanic”-like connection between these two class-crossed lovers: no charm, no complexity, nothing special.

The show, which had a pandemic delay and a 2022 run at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, updates the novel’s time period from the 1940s to the 1970s and then extends to the present. But if there weren’t references about Vietnam, you would be at a loss to recognize the eras of the story — or to pinpoint the story’s locale, which the program notes as “a coastal town in the mid-Atlantic.” David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis’ set echoes that vague sense of place.

That feeling of everywhere/nowhere is reflected in the freshman score by indie singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson , the singer-songwriter whose tunes were featured in TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” They’re pleasant enough, tender and often lilting with introspective lyrics. But for the stretch of a musical, there’s little variation in tone or text, which is full of on-the-nose feelings.

That obviousness, however, may be the key to its popularity — and perhaps here as well. The romantic duo comes across as blank slates on which audiences may project themselves, nostalgically bathed by summer sunsets and moonlit nights, nicely supplied by lighting designer Ben Stanton.

Certainly the novel and film underscore that identification of ordinariness (though the film’s Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling take ordinary to a different level). Perhaps this intimate, small-scale musical will do the same here, but more likely it will land better on tour where the enchantment bar is lower.

As for the production, the staging by Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen,” “Next to Normal”) and Schele Williams (“The Wiz”) feels, for all its intention of intimacy, contrived and unsurprising. For a while the cross-cutting of the three couples haunting each other is intriguing but soon Katie Spelman’s choreography of past and future lives ever-circling each other simply becomes a dizzying one-note effect.

The cross-racial casting of couples nicely underscores the universality of the romance and the ease of imaginative leaps in musical theater.

Plunkett and Harewood bring quiet compassion and authenticity as the oldest Noah and Allie. Plunkett is especially poignant as she struggles for her memories with confusion, curiosity and fear, but also reveals glimpses of a wry self, too, and the person she used to be.

Vasquez and Woods are in fine voice and bring a bit of humor and charm to their reunion scene. Cardoza and Tyson, however, are stuck with the heavy lifting as the teen couple who have to begin the epic romance — but have little in script or song to launch it across the decades.

Andrea Burns as Allie’s mother (and as a head nurse) has an assured presence, but she doesn’t have a song to bring another perspective to a pivotal character, which feels like a loss. Carson Stewart brings a welcome sense of quirkiness and fun as a health care worker.

Schoenfeld Theatre; 1017 seats; top non-premium $199. Opened March 14, 2024. Reviewed March 9. Running time: 2 HOURS 30 MINS.

Production: A presentation by Kevin McCollum, Kurt Deutsch, Jamie Wilson, Gavin Kalin, Stella La Rue, Hunter Arnold, Roy Furman, Nederlander Productions, Lams Productions, Nicole Eisenberg, Betsy Dollinger, Endeavor, Sing Out, Louise! Productions, Timothy Laczynski, Scott Abrams/Jonathan Corr/Leslie Mayer, Bob Boyett, Emily Bock/Pam & Stephen Della Pietra, Est Productions/LTD Productions, Independent Presenters Network, Lucas McMahon in association with Chicago Shakespeare Theater of a musical in two acts by Bekah Brunstetter, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks; music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson.
Crew: Directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams; choreography by Katie Spelman; sets, David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis; costumes, Paloma Young; lighting, Ben Stanton; sound, Nevin Steinberg; projection, Lucy MacKinnon; music director, Geoffrey Ko, music coordinator, Kimberlee Wertz; orchestrations, John Clancy and Carmel Dean; musical supervision and arrangements, Carmel Dean; production stage manager, Victoria Navarro.
Cast: Ryan Vasquez, Joy Woods; John Cardoza, Jordan Tyson, Maryann Plunkett, Dorian Harewood, Andrea Burns, Carson Stewart, Chase Del Rey, Hillary Fisher, Dorcas Leung, Charles E. Wallace; Yassmin Alers, Alex Benoit, Jerome Harmann-Hardeman, Happy McPartlin, Juliette Ojeda, Kim Onah, Charlie Webb.

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‘The Notebook’ Review: A Musical Tear-Jerker or Just All Wet?

The 2004 weepie comes to Broadway with songs by Ingrid Michaelson and a $5 box of tissues.

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On a darkened stage, a man in a white tank top lifts a woman wearing a blue dress under pouring stage rain.

By Jesse Green

Romantic musicals are as personal as romance itself. What makes you sigh and weep may leave the person next to you bored and stony.

At “The Notebook,” I was the person next to you.

You were sniffling even before anything much happened onstage. As the lights came up, an old man dozed while a teenage boy and girl frisked nearby in an unconvincing body of water. A wispy song called “Time” wafted over the footlights: “Time time time time/It was never mine mine mine.”

But having seen (I’m guessing more than once) the 2004 movie on which “The Notebook” is based, and possibly having read the 1996 novel by Nicholas Sparks, you perfectly well knew what was coming. That was the point of mounting the show, which opened on Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater , in the first place.

It therefore cannot be a spoiler — and anyway this block of cheese is impervious — to reveal that over the course of the 54 years covered by the musical, the frisky boy, Noah, turns into the dozing man. And that Allie, the frisky girl, having overcome various impediments to their love, winds up his wife. Nor does it give anything away to add that Allie, now 70 and in a nursing home with dementia, will not remember Noah until he recites their story from a notebook she prepared long ago for that purpose.

So there’s a reason the producers are selling teeny $5 “Notebook”-themed boxes of tissues in the lobby. Love is powerful. Dementia is sad. The result can be heartbreaking.

Or maybe, seen with a cold eye, meretricious.

The movie, a super-slick Hollywood affair, did everything it could to keep the eye warm. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, as the young couple, could not have been glowier. The soundtrack relied on precision-crafted standards like “I’ll Be Seeing You” to yank at your tear ducts. The production design, like a montage of greeting cards come to life , celebrated valentine passion, anniversary tenderness and golden sympathy, releasing flocks of trained geese into a technicolor sunset to symbolize lifelong pair bonding.

The musical, unwilling except at the margins to alter a plot so beloved — or at least so familiar — tries to distinguish itself in other ways. It aims for a rougher, hand-hewn texture, befitting Noah’s career as a carpenter and the indie-folk sound of its songwriter, Ingrid Michaelson . The directors, Michael Greif and Schele Williams, have cast the couples regardless of race: a nice, universalizing touch.

In other updates, the book writer, Bekah Brunstetter, has shifted the period by two decades — Noah fights in Vietnam, not at the Battle of the Bulge. She adds a third, intermediate incarnation of the couple, crowding the stage with replicants and pushing the 27-year-old Allie (Joy Woods) into the star spot because someone has to be there. (The 29-year-old Noah is played by Ryan Vasquez.) And instead of the cliché geese, Brunstetter gives us … sea turtles?

No, I don’t get that one either.

In any case, the de-slicking was a mistake; it turns out that the Hollywood varnish was the only thing holding the picture together. In its place, the musical makes few convincing arguments for a separate existence.

Certainly Michaelson’s relentlessly mid-tempo songs do not; they are pretty but flyaway, as insubstantial as blue smoke. Except for a number in which teenager Allie and Noah (Jordan Tyson and John Cardoza) first see each other undressed, the lyrics are vague and humorless, often budding with clichés the book is trying to prune. “I wanna know that my old heart can grow like spring again,” sings Older Noah (Dorian Harewood) — an alarming thought, really, for a 72-year-old or for his cardiologist. Older Allie (the great Maryann Plunkett) barely sings at all, a great loss.

When songs provide so little information, barely differentiating the characters let alone advancing the plot, a musical tends to sag. And when a musical has gone to some trouble to accommodate those songs — the movie of “The Notebook” runs two hours, the show hardly 20 minutes more — the trade-offs are of the nose-versus-face variety.

So Brunstetter, hacking through the story with a scythe to make room, has left bald stumps everywhere. Allie’s meddling, disapproving parents are demoted to mere nasties, their motivations discarded with their back story. Her fiancé is a nonentity. What Noah and Allie do between their late teens (when they meet and separate) and their late 20s (when they are rapturously rejoined) is reduced to a throwaway: “Let’s see — heartbreak, graduation, many many Tuesdays, Thanksgivings, a war.” Flip lines like that break whatever spell the material, usually earnest to a fault, is trying to cast.

The staging is consistently more engaging. Unlike the movie, which keeps its focus on one couple at a time, here we often get all three together, in color-coded costumes (by Paloma Young) that clarify their connections. (The Noahs wear blue and brown, the Allies blue and white.) And though the switching among them sometimes feels mechanical, as the lights (by Ben Stanton) dim on Older Noah reading the notebook and rise on the younger characters enacting its story, the process creates a kind of time-lapse exposure that feels natively theatrical and thus occasionally effective.

On Allie’s side of the equation especially, the time-lapse provides information the movie did not. Because all three ages exist simultaneously, her impetuousness as a teenager is connected to her indecisiveness 10 years later and, perhaps less credibly, to her eventual dementia. In all periods, her relationship to home — “Home” is the title of the Act I finale — is usefully forefronted: the home she leaves, the home she dreams of, the home Noah builds her, the home she cannot get back to.

But only in this last stage does “The Notebook” achieve any real pathos, thanks to Plunkett’s uncompromising naturalism and the lifetime of stage savvy she inevitably brings with her. Her locked-down Allie, banging frantically on the doors of her memory, is an unexpectedly terrifying character to meet in an otherwise bland musical.

It doesn’t hurt that, for those who have followed Plunkett over the years, she is also banging down the doors of our memory. Her troubled Agnes in “Agnes of God” (her Broadway debut, in 1982), her insouciant Sally in “Me and My Girl,” for which she won a Tony Award, and her series of anxious dinner-table Americans in all 12 plays of Richard Nelson’s “Rhinebeck Panorama” help turn a barely there character into a moving one.

Whether that is sufficient to make me cry for a would-be weepie is a different matter. That the “Notebook”-themed tissues are so teeny says it all.

The Notebook At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, Manhattan; notebookmusical.com . Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green

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The Notebook

Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

Rachel McAdams as young Allie Hamilton; Ryan Gosling as young Noah Calhoun; Gena Rowlands as elderly Allie; James Garner as elderly Noah; Joan Allen as Anne Hamilton; David Thornton as John Hamilton; James Marsden as Lon; Sam Shepard as Frank Calhoun; Kevin Connolly as Fin

Home Release Date

Nick Cassavetes

Distributor

New Line Cinema

Movie Review

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.

So opens The Notebook against the backdrop of a spectacular sunset over a lake, grabbing our hearts and never letting go as the extraordinary love story of Allie and Noah unfolds.

It begins at the end. Every day his failing health allows, an octogenarian shuffles down the corridors of a nursing home and enters an old woman’s room. Her mind is riddled by Alzheimer’s disease, but as the man reads from the handwritten pages of a worn notebook, science is defied and her memory is sparked by the timeless story of their love. …

The chronicle he reads begins one summer in 1930s North Carolina. Poor country boy Noah Calhoun meets rich city girl Allie Hamilton and is instantly attracted. Soon the two are inseparable, spending every waking moment together. He shows her how to have good ol’ country-style fun; she invites him into her world of fine arts and garden parties. By the end of the summer the teen soul mates have given their hearts, and most of their purity, to each other.

There’s just one problem: Allie’s parents have her future all planned out, and Noah doesn’t fit the picture of the wealthy, blue-blooded husband they have in mind for her. So without giving the young lovers a chance to even say goodbye, Mrs. Hamilton packs her little girl off to a fancy women’s college. Noah writes to Allie every day for a year, but never receives a reply. Unaware of parental deception, Allie and Noah are each devastated at the perceived abandonment by the other. They slowly rebuild their lives apart, haunted by memories of their first love.

Noah survives a stint in Patton’s third army during WWII, then returns to buy and restore his dream home, all the while fighting off Allie’s ghost. Allie gets an art degree and becomes a volunteer army nurse before settling down to the life her parents dreamed of. But why does she see Noah’s face while accepting the rich and handsome Lon’s proposal? When all hope seems lost, “fate” intervenes and they’re given a second chance at love.

Positive Elements

Noah’s dad models selflessness and generosity of spirit to his son. He teaches him to build a relationship one memory at a time by sharing life’s simple joys like fishing and eating pancakes at midnight. He also instills in his young son a love of poetry by having him repeatedly recite Walt Whitman to overcome a speech impediment. Noah’s love of the written word is embraced by Allie, and their shared passion for expressing their feelings in writing becomes the life support of their relationship. (In today’s high-tech world, it’s refreshing to find a story that upholds the power of the written word.)

Mrs. Hamilton redeems her broken relationship with her daughter by returning Noah’s letters at a critical moment and sharing a story from her own youth that helps Allie choose what path she will take. Noah’s example of placing his wife before all others is an inspiration to a generation taught to put their own needs first. He also makes it clear that love is hard, everyday work, and that squabbles don’t have to undo it. Ultimately, he gives up his beloved home and personal life to reside in a separate wing at her nursing home, not for health reasons, but to allow himself constant access to Allie.

Another poignant lesson here is that all human life has value. The elderly and mentally disabled still have much to offer and are not ready to be cast by society into the invisible realm of shadow people. This is reflected not only in the relationship between the aging Allie and Noah, but also in the compassionate treatment they receive from nursing home attendants who come up with creative ways to accommodate patients’ emotional and physical needs.

Spiritual Elements

The narrator, commenting on the doctor’s prognosis of Allie’s dementia, says, “Science only comes so far and then comes God.” He also speaks of the “miracle” of love. While Allie and Noah never discuss spiritual matters (except for lighthearted banter about being a bird in some past life), their love matures into the embodiment of God’s ideal expressed in 1 Corinthians 13.

Sexual Content

Author Nicholas Sparks told ChristianityToday.com that he believed his stories (most notably A Walk to Remember ) resonated with Christians because, “I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don’t write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.” His book The Notebook mentions (briefly) that the teenage Noah and Allie “both lost their virginity.” This movie, however, translates those four words into an onscreen romp that’ll leave families squirming uncomfortably in their seats. After exchanging promises, Noah and Allie shed their clothes one piece at a time, then engage in totally nude foreplay. (Calculated positioning of arms, legs and the camera, along with the low light, obscures both bodies’ most “delicate” parts.) Allie’s remaining virtue is rescued (and moviegoers’ along with her) when Noah’s best friend barges in and tells them Allie’s folks have the cops out looking for them.

Years later the now-adult couple’s second tryst, and actual consummation of their passions (an event written about in considerably detail in the book) occurs long into Allie’s engagement to a “good man” that she says more than once she’s in love with. She playfully rebukes Noah’s advances with, “You wouldn’t dare. I’m a married woman!” He counters by reminding her she isn’t married yet . They then commence a two-day love affair that, because of its fiery intensity and just-shy of explicit nudity feels like it lasts at least that long onscreen.

Thinking Allie is lost to him forever, Noah “takes the sting of loneliness” away by becoming bed buddies with a war widow named Martha. (Sex is implied when Martha gets out of bed nude; she’s seen from the back, from the waist up.) Martha knows he’s thinking of another woman during their romps but accepts his explanation that “the things you want are all broken, gone.” Martha goes over to Noah’s house after he’s reunited with Allie and asks to meet his “one.” Inexplicably, instead of being jealous, Martha is inspired by the love she sees. Her parting words to Noah are, “For the first time since I lost [my husband], I feel like I have something to look forward to.”

Elsewhere, Allie licks ice cream off Noah’s face on a public street (risqué stuff for 1930s rural America). And he slaps her bottom as she gets out of his truck. A nude Allie is seen painting (waist up from the back). A few characters wear revealing outfits.

Violent Content

Allie pushes and slaps Noah several times during a heated argument. (To his credit, Noah refuses to retaliate.) Noah’s best friend, Fin, dies in battle. (War images are brief and tempered.)

Crude or Profane Language

A half-dozen misuses of God’s name (three of “g–d–n”), and a dozen or so other mild profanities (“a–,” “h—,” “d–n”). The elderly Allie, commenting on a notebook passage, says, “She should have told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

The narrator tells us that Noah goes on a 10-day drinking binge after seeing Allie with her fiancé, Lon. Indeed, both Noah and Allie drink quite a bit to smother their pain. Allie and Lon seem a bit tipsy while drinking champagne at a nightclub. Lon has a casual drink in his office. When the adult Allie and Noah have beers with dinner, she tells him she’s a cheap drunk. Guests at a party drink and smoke cigarettes. WWII soldiers and Lon also inhale.

Other Negative Elements

A few juvenile hijinks don’t cause much of a ruffle onscreen, but could result in real-life unhappy endings if imitated: An impetuous young Noah dangles from the heights of a Ferris wheel with one hand to capture Allie’s attention. (She responds by undoing his pants and revealing his boxers.) When Noah challenges Allie to lie down in the middle of an intersection (remember, this is rural America) in the middle of the night, she asks, “What happens if a car comes?” His deadpan reply? “You die. You have to learn to trust.” Elsewhere, army recruits are seen nude. (Their hands cover their privates.)

Allie’s parents make no secret of the fact that they believe Noah isn’t worthy of their daughter. They like him all right, he’s just not rich enough and doesn’t have the right daddy. On the night of the couple’s breakup, Noah overhears Allie’s mother calling him “trash, trash, trash!” Mrs. Hamilton’s deception of hiding Noah’s letters from Allie succeeds in keeping the couple apart for years, but at the cost of a strained mother-daughter relationship.

Some will write The Notebook off as yet another emotionally manipulative and overly-sappy “chick flick.” But because it looks so tenderly at an elderly couple stricken by Alzheimer’s, others will find themselves attracted to it, placing themselves into the story and living out its emotion. It might also be seen as a timely reflection of the deep and lasting loved shared by Nancy and Ronald Reagan, whose love story has made a permanent cultural impression. Just as Nancy’s commitment and love transcended the emotional and physical gulf that marked her husband’s disease, so Noah’s steadfast love for Allie sustains them.

Nicholas Sparks has said his story “is a metaphor for God’s love for us all. The theme is everlasting, unconditional love. It also goes into the sanctity of marriage and the beauty you can find in a loving relationship.” Although that metaphor gets more than a little muddied by premarital sex, Noah and Allie ultimately realize the full potential of mature love. Most romantic dramas only celebrate the chaotic, spontaneous flush of young love, serving it up as the pinnacle of the relationship before either settling down on a complacent plateau or crashing down the slippery slope of dysfunction. Sparks’ movie shows a rare understanding of the kind of love God desires for married couples, a once-in-a-lifetime deep intimacy of spirit, expressed without boundaries and growing in strength and loveliness as time goes by. It is the kind of soul-satisfying love that God established as a demonstration of His own love for His people, hence the author’s metaphor. That makes it all the more regrettable that steamy sex scenes will give a lot of adults reason to pause, and push the tale (at least unedited) out-of-bounds for discerning teens.

Rhonda Handlon

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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 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 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.

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Inspiration

It wasn’t easy to come up with the plot for my first (published) novel, but in the end, I decided to go with something that I knew I could do.

The Notebook was inspired by my wife’s grandparents, two wonderful people who spent over 60 years together. My wife was very fond of these two people—the other set of grandparents had died when she was young—and she was one of those people who loved to visit on the weekends, growing up. When she turned sixteen, as soon as she got her license, she would drive up to visit them on the weekends and even when she went off to college (about two hours away) she still went to visit them a couple of times a month just to check on them, to make sure they had groceries, and all those things a nice granddaughter would do.

Since they were so special to her, my wife was, of course, looking forward to having these two people involved in her wedding. But, unfortunately, the day before the wedding, we got a call and were told that the grandparents wouldn’t be able to attend. Even though they were only forty minutes away by car and someone else could drive them, they were in such ill health that their doctor recommended they stay at home. My wife was very sad about that, but the day was so hectic, she did her best to put it out of her mind. I guess it finally struck home for her when she was standing in the back of the church and getting ready to walk down the aisle. In the back of the church was a small table and on the table was a box that had been brought by the florist. It contained the corsages and boutonnieres for the wedding party and our parents, but as she was standing there, she couldn’t help but notice there were two flowers left untouched—those that had been meant for the grandparents.

We went through the ceremony and reception, we talked to family and danced, did all those typical things, and went back to the hotel. When I woke the next morning, my wife rolled over and met my eyes, looking just about as beautiful as I’d ever seen a woman look.

“Do you love me?” she asked. “Of course I do,” I whispered, wondering why she asked. “Well good,” she said, clapping her hands and speaking in an authoritarian tone. “Then you’re going do something for me.” “Yes ma’am,” I said.

Anyway, what she had me do was put on my tuxedo again. She slipped into her wedding dress, grabbed those two flowers (she’d brought them to the hotel), a piece of wedding cake, and a video that my brother-in-law had shot the day before, and we brought a little wedding up to the grandparents.

They had no idea we’d be coming and were excited to see us. My grandfather-in-law slipped into his jacket and put on the boutonniere and we took photographs with them; we went inside and watched the video as we ate a slice of cake, and it was then they told us the story of how they met and fell in love, parts of which eventually made their way into The Notebook.

But though their story was wonderful, what I most remember from that day is the way they were treating each other. The way his eyes shined when he looked at her, the way he held her hand, the way he got her tea and took care of her. I remember watching them together and thinking to myself that after sixty years of marriage, these two people were treating each other exactly the same as my wife and I were treating each other after twelve hours. What a wonderful gift they’d given us, I thought, to show us on our first day of marriage that true love can last forever.

New Bern, NC

New Bern is a quiet town on the coast of North Carolina. Located in Craven County, New Bern is the second oldest town in North Carolina. It is a town rich in American history, a site of Civil War battle, and the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola. New Bern’s downtown is bustling with restaurants and entertainment, and the town’s southern reaches are home to the quieter Croatan National Forest. With historic homes, beautiful gardens, and quaint shops, New Bern provides the ideal setting for The Notebook, which takes us back in time to a quiet and romantic period in the city’s history, as well as The Wedding, A Bend in the Road and Safe Haven.

As teenagers, Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling) begin a whirlwind courtship that soon blossoms into tender intimacy. The young couple is quickly separated by Allie's upper-class parents who insist that Noah isn't right for her. Several years pass and, when they meet again, their passion is rekindled, forcing Allie to choose between her soulmate and class order. This beautiful tale has a particularly special meaning to an older gentleman (James Garner) who regularly reads the timeless love story to his aging companion (Gena Rowlands).

Based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook is at once heartwarming and heartbreaking and will capture you with its sweeping and emotional force.

Director: Nick Cassavetes
Screenplay: Jeremy Leven
Cast: Gena Rowlands, James Garner, Ryan Gosling
Run Time: 123 minutes

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One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The Notebook by Roland Allen review – notes on living

From plans for flying machines to philosophy – the remarkable joy of jotting things down

R oland Allen loves notebooks. Why wouldn’t he? He is, after all, a writer. In his new study, delightfully subtitled A History of Thinking on Paper, he declares: “If your business is words, a notebook can be at once your medium – and your mirror.” Paul Valéry was at least as devoted to his notebooks as the symbolist poetry for which he is best known. He awoke early each morning for half a century to write in them, amassing 261 books in total. “Having dedicated those hours to the life of the mind, I earn the right to be stupid for the rest of the day.”

Notebooks in different guises have been around since at least the late 13th century. In Florence they were used as ledgers, spurred the development of double-entry book-keeping, and, not least because they were made of paper rather than more expensive and less stable parchment, were integral to the rise of mercantilism. In the form of sketch books they allowed artists to depict their surroundings repeatedly and develop more realistic techniques.

There also emerged rapiaria – grab-bags of pious phrases taken from scriptures. And zibaldoni – collections of recipes, ballads, prayers and personal information that could be shown to friends and even continued by relatives. This latter practice could backfire; Allen cites a zibaldon e in which someone, possibly the writer’s brother, has added: “Note that you are lying through your teeth like the scoundrel you are, and you are a crazy windbag.”

There were memoriali , giornali , quaderni , squartofogli . Autograph books, spiritual self-audits, lists of friends, climate logs. Also, a 410-page “fish book” by Adriaen Coenen, whose mapping of fishing grounds and marine animals, to say nothing of its meticulous drawings of shrimp, turtles and herrings, was so revelatory that visitors to a Leiden fair paid more to read its pages than to inspect the actual fish.

An especially haunting chapter concerns LHD 244, a musical treatise used by generations of singers and players from the 15th to the early 17th century, that became “tatty, scarred … passed from hand to hand, accreting knowledge and nuance as it went. The constant companion of a succession of childless Franciscans, living and dying together in the community of their order, perhaps it came to embody the bonds that grew between teachers and students as they worked together to make music to the glory of God.”

Possibly the most celebrated notebooker of all was Leonardo da Vinci . Every day he scribbled, doodled, diagrammed. He filled thousands of pages with sketches of waves, bubbles, vortices; designs for pumps, valves, furnaces, grinders; closely observed chins, vertebrae, feet bones. He made lists – 67 different words to describe the ways in which water moves. He explored geometry, anatomy, mechanics, colour itself. Speculative as much as forensic, he imagined prefabricated mobile homes and flying machines. The books themselves are almost airborne with possibilities, dreaming, gleeful experimentation.

This quality – of movement, of freedom – makes notebooks enduringly appealing. They often contain direct observations, primary information, pre-theorised experiences. Is this authenticity? Brian Eno came up with the conceit that NOTEBOOKS could be an acronym for Nothing On This Earth Betrays Our Own Karakter So. Allen quotes an 18th-century Dutch woman named Magdalena van Schinne who began her journal: “Here, I will be able to pour out my soul entirely.” This doesn’t mean all notebooks are reliable; one chapter discusses how police pocketbooks have often been tampered with, fabricated, or, in the case of the Hillsborough disaster, withheld from official inquiries.

Many school curriculums downplay cursive these days. Shame. Allen points to evidence that maintaining a notebook with pen and paper is best for processing and retaining information. It can stave off depression and act as ballast to those struggling with ADHD. It is tactile, a form of “embodied cognition”, another example of the superiority of slowness. A beautiful chapter entitled In Search of Lost Time honours Danish nurses at ICU units who started patient diaries to detail the physical changes and progress made by men and women whose sense of self had been decimated by sickness. Paying attention, caring, handwriting: this is love.

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Book of the day
Literary criticism

The Notebook

By nicholas sparks.

'The Notebook' is a 1996 novel by American Novelist Nicholas Sparks. It tells the romantic story of two aged lovers and the role of time in their lives.

About the Book

Article written by Israel Njoku

Degree in M.C.M with focus on Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

‘ The Notebook ‘ by Nicholas Sparks is a novel with a story of enduring love and unwavering devotion between soul mates. The novel tells of the passionate union between Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson who fall in love as teenagers but whose love is threatened by separation, class discrimination, aging, and disease. The way Noah and Allie face the challenges to their love makes ‘ The Notebook ‘ by Nicholas Sparks an inspiring story that quickly became a bestseller and a flourishing motion picture after its release.

Key Facts about The Notebook

Title : ‘ The Notebook’
Author : Nicholas Sparks
Publication Date : October 1, 1996
Number of pages : 115
Setting : New Bern, a Southern town in post-WW II USA
Genre : Romance
Protagonist : Noah Calhoun
Point of View : First-Person Narration
Climax : Anne’s warning visit to Noah’s home

Nicholas Sparks and The Notebook

‘ The Notebook ‘ is Nicholas Sparks’ first published novel, although it was the third novel he wrote as the first two were never published. According to Sparks, ‘ The Notebook ‘ was inspired by the love story of his wife’s grandparents who had been married for sixty years at the time Sparks was getting married to his wife Cathy Cote.

‘ The Notebook ’s’ manuscript was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park from her agency’s slush pile and after reading it, Park offered to represent Sparks. Park secured a 1 million US dollar advance for the book from the Time Warner Book Group and on October 1, 1996, the novel was officially published.

Nicholas Sparks has about twenty-two published novels and two non-fiction books in his literary career. Eleven of his twenty-two novels including ‘ The Notebook ‘ have been adapted into a film, putting him on the list of one of the most adapted novelists in the world.

Books Related to The Notebook

Novels with aged protagonists have an earthly quality to them. Books similar to ‘ The Notebook ‘ by Nicholas Sparks in this regard include ‘ The Longest Ride ‘ also by Nicholas Sparks, ‘ Water for Elephants ‘ by Sara Gruen , and ‘ The Old Man and the Sea ‘ by Ernest Hemingway .

All the above books have aged protagonists who despite their old age, display admirable strength of character and determination in going after what they desire. Like eighty-nine-year-old Noah Calhoun in ‘ The Notebook ‘ who does not concede defeat to Alzheimer’s disease; there is ninety-one-year-old Ira Stevinson in ‘ The Longest Ride ‘ who stubbornly clings to life in the face of a fatal accident; then ninety-three-year-old Jacob Jankowski in ‘ Water for Elephants ‘ who escapes a nursing home to go after his dream of reliving life in a circus; and old Santiago in ‘ The Old Man and the Sea ‘ who does not allow an eighty-four days unlucky streak deter his resolve in his fishing venture.

These books also have themes of love, mortality, and determination in common. Readers who enjoyed ‘ The Notebook ‘ would likely also enjoy the other book titles mentioned above.

The Lasting Impact of The Notebook

‘ The Notebook ‘ was a paperback best seller for more than a year after its publication. It was in the New York Times Best Seller List immediately after its publication in October 1996 and has been translated into many languages including Spanish and French. It has also made waves in the entertainment industry especially in Hollywood with its film and musical adaptations.

‘ The Notebook ‘ was adapted into a popular 2004 film with the same title, starring Ryan Gosling as Noah and Rachel McAdams as Allie. Then James Garner and Gena Rowlands as the older Noah and older Allie respectively. The movie was directed by Nick Cassavetes.

‘ The Notebook ‘ is being adapted into a television series by writer Todd Graff to be executive produced by Nicholas Sparks and his literary agent Theresa Park for Warner Bros Television. There are also plans to adapt ‘ The Notebook ‘ into a musical that will premiere on Broadway although the date of the premiere is yet to be announced.

‘ The Notebook ‘ also inspired a sequel titled ‘ The Wedding ,’ a 2003 novel also by Nicholas Sparks. ‘ The Wedding’ followed the lives of descendants of the major characters in ‘ The Notebook ‘ and was relatively successful as well.

The Notebook Review ⭐

An analysis of the reasons why ‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks has received both praise and criticism from readers and critics.

The Notebook Historical Context 📖

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks cuts across many decades with landmark historical events that affect the characters and the plot of the novel.

The Notebook Best Quotes 💬

The musings of the narrator in the novel make for interesting quotes from the novel. Here are the best quotes from ‘The Notebook.’

The Notebook Character List 📖

From the poetic Noah to the artistic Allie, the main characters in ‘The Notebook’ are symbolic and evoke a depth of thought.

The Notebook Themes and Analysis 📖

At the core of ‘The Notebook’ is the relationship between the heart and the mind, feelings, and memories. The themes, symbols and key moments in the novel are discussed here.

The Notebook Summary 📖

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks is a short romantic novel with a classic tale of love that sails on turbulent waters. Noah and Allie share a love that wades through many challenges but triumphs at the end.

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The Notebook

An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes. An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes. An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes.

Nick Cassavetes
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Gena Rowlands
James Garner
Rachel McAdams
1.4K User reviews
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53 Metascore
12 wins & 10 nominations

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Trivia Ryan Gosling prepared for his role by living in Charleston, South Carolina before filming began. For two months, he rowed the Ashley River every morning and built furniture during the day.
Goofs The narrator says, "And after two years of chasing Erwin Rommel through the North African desert..." American forces fought in North Africa from November 1942 to May 1943 - just 6 months.

Noah : I am nothing special; just 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 in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.

Alternate versions The love scenes had to be toned down to avoid an R rating in the United States. The footage is featured on the DVD as deleted scenes. There is no explicit nudity or actual sex shown. Any "sex" scenes were edited down to implied sex instead.
Connections Edited into The Notebook: Deleted Scenes (2005)
Soundtracks I'll Be Seeing You Written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal Performed by Billie Holiday and Jimmy Durante Courtesy of The Verve Music Group and Warner Bros. Records Inc. Under license from Universal Music Enterprises By arrangement with Warner Strategic Marketing

User reviews 1.4K

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June 25, 2004 (United States)
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Jun 27, 2004
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So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday." — Nicholas Sparks ( The Notebook )

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