The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks is considered the gold standard of love stories. When it came out almost thirty years ago it was number one on the New York Times bestseller list in its first week and stayed on the list for over a year. When the book came out I was a young teen who was into horror novels, so I never read it. And over the years, I never felt inclined to pick it up. I’ve also never seen the hit film based on The Notebook. But with The Notebook The Musical winding down on Broadway, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and was surprisingly touched by Spark’s striking story of the staying power of love.
[Warning: My review of The Notebook contains some spoilers!]
The Notebook starts off ho-hum
The Notebook came out nearly thirty years ago and the movie is considered a staple of romantic movie lovers everywhere, so I’m not super worried about spoilers here, but let’s just start by saying that the beginning of The Notebook is kinda boring. Noah and Allie have a torrid summer together when they’re teenagers, but her parents don’t approve. She’s the rich southern belle, and he’s the backwoods good ol’ boy. She leaves at the end of the summer, and they never see each other again.
But Noah never forgets her. After going off to find work during the Great Depression and fighting in World War II, he returns home and begins fixing up the old house that he always wanted to restore when he was a kid.
His restoration gets the attention of a journalist, who writes up a feature about him in the paper. Allie is shocked when she sees the article, just weeks before her wedding to a rich lawyer. She makes excuses to high-tail it down to Noah and turns his world upside down by showing up at his door. The two share a passionate couple of days before Allie’s mom shows up to inform Allie that her fiancé has figured things out and is on his way to bring her back home. Allie leaves Noah broken-hearted to return to her life of splendor.
Except she doesn’t. Of course. When she gets to the hotel with her fiancé she ends up breaking it off with him and coming back to Noah. The two have a long and happy life together. House, kids, dogs, the whole nine yards. It’s sweet enough but predictable and boring for a romance.
Then Nicholas Sparks whallops you with the second half
But when you get to this point in the story, almost half the pages are still left in the book. What’s going on? Turns out, the truly heart-wrenching and beautiful part of the story is yet to come. Because now Allie and Noah are old. They’ve been together for decades. Noah loves Allie every bit as much as he did fifty years ago, maybe more. But Allie isn’t all-together there anymore. She has dementia and most days she doesn’t even know who she is, let alone anyone else.
But every day Noah comes and reads to her from, you guessed it, a notebook. The story he reads to her is their story. About how they found each other after fifteen years apart. But he leaves the ending out. He also calls her (and himself) by a different name. He does this so that she can enjoy the story and feel his love without being afraid not knowing who anyone is or having a love she doesn’t feel forced on her.
He then spends as much of the day with her as she will allow. The doctors say it can’t help, there is no helping Allie’s condition (this was thirty years ago, luckily we’ve learned a lot since then). And some days it never goes past two old people spending a few nice hours together. But some days, Allie remembers. And those days are the days that Noah lives for because for a few short hours he has the love of his life back. Every day he does this. That kind of enduring love, even in the face of impossible obstacles, is what makes The Notebook so incredible.
The Notebook showcases the kind of love we all search for
What kind of man holds on like that? What kind of love is that strong? The kind of love that we all want to find. Which is what draws so many people to this story. I’m still more of a horror fan, and I wasn’t really impressed with the first half of The Notebook. But I’m not too proud to say that I was crying my eyes out in the second half. The devotion and patience that Noah shows Allie is incredible.
In the first half, I found that devotion sad. Get a life and move on, Noah, was my thought. But at the end, he did have a life, a beautiful life, and he’s just trying to make sure that the woman he loves continues to have a beautiful life too. Even after thirty years, Sparks’ story is still beautiful and relevant to humanity. The Notebook was Sparks’ first novel, and he’s gone on to publish twenty-three New York Times bestsellers, so obviously the man knows what he’s doing. Romances still aren’t my favorite, but there’s no denying the power and emotion of The Notebook.
It’s possible that the story hit me extra hard because ending up like Allie is a big fear of mine. I watched my great-grandmother become someone who didn’t know what was going on around her anymore, and it was sad. But funnily enough, she was part of her own The Notebook like story. She and my great-grandpa were in the same nursing home like Noah and Allie, and like Noah and Allie they had separate rooms. But the staff told us that they were always finding them together. My great-grandmother especially loved to sneak into my great-grandpa’s bed. The staff said they would laugh together like little kids and it was really cute. Their story shows the power of love just as well as Allie and Noah’s story. You see, my great-grandparents didn’t know each other when they were young. They didn’t remember each other anymore. But they still felt love towards each other and wanted to be together. Love is an amazing thing.
The Notebook is still a moving story
There are some books that don’t stand the test of time. Or that need to be reimagined to be enjoyed as time goes by. Thirty years isn’t all that long in the world of literature, but it’s not that short of a time either in our quickly changing culture. I would say that thirty years after The Notebook was released to such sweeping success, it is still worth reading.
If you’re someone who is into romances, it will leave you torn apart, sobbing tears of joy and pain, needing someone to pick you up and hold you afterwards. If you’re not that into romances, you’re still going to be a mess after the second half. I challenge anyone to read The Notebook and not end up crying, or at least misty-eyed, at the end. Remember, the amazing part of the story isn’t the steaming young love, it’s the steadfast devotion of a lifetime. Passion is exciting when you’re young, but I’ll take older Noah and Allie’s gentle love over passion any day.
My Rating: 8/10
The Notebook the Musical’s final performance on Broadway is December 15, 2024. The film can be found on streaming services, and the novel is available wherever books are sold. Have you seen the movie or the musical or read the book? Or all of the above? Let us know what you think on social media @mycosmiccircus or @boxseatbabes!
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