The Notebook:

By; Nicholas Sparks

Number of pages: 207

Originally published on: 1996

" - They won't stay?

- I doubt it. They are driven by instinct and this isn't their place." (pg. 107)

The firsts in our lives shape us into being who we are, molding our perception of the world around us. They are the first encounters we have with formerly unfamiliar senses and ideas. The first time a newborn touches its mother, it connects to her through its senses, exposed to the first experience of a physical and emotional connection on earth. The first time a father praises a toddler, it experiences recognition, acceptance, and motivation. The first time a child feels heartbroken, it sense a new form of affliction, and comes up with ways to avoid it in the future.

The Notebook is a story of a first, it explains the first loves of Allie and Noah. Allie and Noah first meet when they are young adults in a Southern town called New Bern. Allie is from a highly prestigious family, who were visiting the small town for the summer break. Noah is a country boy who catches feelings for Allie the first time he sees her. The summer they spend together is the summer they fall in love. They become each other's firsts, from each other they learn what love is, what it feels like, and what it looks like.

At the end of the summer, they part ways due to their family circumstances, and do not cross paths until they are in their middle ages, and until Allie is engaged to another man. The story explains how they get together after fourteen years. The long years that came between them seem to not have lessened their connection. Both yearn for the familiarity the other brings.

In the last bulk of the book, the author moves from explaining the history and new events of the couple's relationship to telling the reader about their later ages. The later chapters show us an old Allie and Noah, whom we know have married and had five kids together, and now are both suffering from different diseases. Noah has cancer, he says he beat two before and this is the third return of the disease; Allie has Alzheimer's.

In their last years together, Noah continues to show the same open and passionate love to his wife, even as Allie's conditioned worsened. Before the disease took a toll, Allie knew how she would be affected by the disease, and that her first love, Noah, would eventually be a stranger to her; losing all the memories of him, losing the sense of familiarity that he brought.

The book tells us that most days, Allie does not remember Noah, like they predicted. But Noah does not leave space between him and her even on the days that it gets bad. He knows that humans are with their instincts forever, and just like the swans that eventually find their way back to Mattamuskeet, Allie will come back home.

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Quotes from the book:

" Natural things gave back more than they took, and their sounds always brought him to the way man was supposed to be. " (pg. 9)

" It's God's music and it'll take you home. " (pg. 9)

personal rating of the book: 6/10