Will Davies, Harlequin Romance coverI wanted to read this because I’d heard so many mildly disparaging comparisons -- “oh, this is sentimental, like The Notebook,” or “this has same kind of blind devotion from fans as The Notebook.” I wanted to know exactly what kind of sentimental this was, or what kind of oxycontin it was. It seemed like a cultural touchstone.
But OMG it was so bad. The opening acknowledgements sounded like they were written by one of my former C students, which was very alarming.
However, the story itself was written more competently than the acknowledgements -- the expression of the ideas is quite competent, in fact. It’s just that the ideas aren’t very powerful or even interesting.
I kept waiting for something “big” to happen, but suddenly the book was over and nothing “big” had happened at all. Everything was just perfect in a Redbook magazine kind of way.
At the end we find out that Sparks based this story on his grandparents’ actual lives, and that makes you wince and think, oh that’s cute, and maybe it explains why Sparks kept everything so generic … he just didn’t want to go there about his grandparents.
But then he did go there -- or somewhere -- with several hot sex scenes. So.
And that’s all the characters do -- eat, have sex, wear nice outfits. There is nothing else going on. The “events” are like snapshots described to us -- which might be an interesting idea in the right hands, but here is just really only about the clothing, the food and the mild porn. Nothing deeper.
Maybe it made for a great movie -- I haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to now. Maybe the movie injected some life into the story... because it is a cute concept and could be really powerful... and I think the movie must be better and that that is what everybody thinks of when they think of The Notebook, because the criticisms are really mild. People have ragged on Twilight so harshly, and I think it’s superior, creatively, to The Notebook.
So either the movie is acceptable and that’s what people identify as The Notebook, or people feel bad that it’s about real-life old people and therefore let it off the hook. Maybe people see it as a blank canvas and inject their own powerful imaginations into it. I cannot otherwise account for its huge, huge popularity.
About a third of the way in, I started to think, “This is just like The Bridges of Madison County,” which is a real insult, ay. But by the end, The Notebook made The Bridges of Madison County look good. O_o
2 comments:
This is a wonderful story of true love. Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson meet and fall in love. Allie is a junior in high school, and Noah has just graduated. Facing many differences, they struggle to be wotj each other because Allie's parents disapprove of their relationship. Noah is devastated when Allie moves away with her parents. Still, Noah writes Allie a letter everyday for a whole year, but he never gets a reply. There is a reason and I wouldn't spoil the story for you.
Ceska, you make the story sound exciting. This means you are a better storyteller than Nicholas Sparks.
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