The Notebook
In a North Carolina nursing home, an elderly man named Duke sits each day beside a woman whose mind has been taken by Alzheimer's and reads to her from a battered notebook. The story he reads is theirs: a summer in 1932 when Allie Nelson, a wealthy young woman from Winston-Salem, met Noah Calhoun, a small-town lumberyard worker, in the coastal village of New Bern, fell in love over a few perfect weeks, and was pulled away by parents who saw no future in him. Years later, on the eve of Allie's society wedding to a respectable lawyer, a newspaper photo of a restored plantation house brings her back to New Bern for what she tells herself will be a final goodbye. Nicholas Sparks's 1996 debut novel, drawn loosely from his wife's grandparents, became a defining contemporary American love story and the basis for the 2004 film, faithful to its central conviction that real devotion is what survives when memory does not.
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Also by Nicholas Sparks
What you might want to know about The Notebook
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An old man named Duke reads from a worn notebook to a fellow nursing home patient about Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson, who fell in love at a 1940 carnival in New Bern, North Carolina. Allie's parents pulled her north, the war took Noah to Europe, and her Raleigh wedding is two weeks away.
Yes. A 2004 film adaptation directed by Nick Cassavetes and starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams was released. The film is widely considered one of the most successful Nicholas Sparks adaptations.
The Notebook (1996) was the first novel in a loose series. The Wedding (2003), The Notebook's sequel, follows the same family decades later. See Me (2015) and Two by Two (2016) also feature connected characters.
The Notebook was written by Nicholas Sparks, published in 2014 by Grand Central Publishing.
The Notebook is 272 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Notebook takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Notebook is a standalone novel by Nicholas Sparks, not part of a series.
The Notebook is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
