Tarusha Mittal:
This one’s for the die-hard romantic in you. Nicholas Sparks has the ability to weave beautiful love stories out of seemingly everyday situations. He manages to tug at the heart strings of the reader in an unimaginable manner.
It is meant to be the sequel to another epic novel, The Notebook, but for the readers’ who haven’t read the former, it would be no mean task to grasp the flavour of this one because it has a soul of its own.
The book’s protagonist is Wilson Lewis who comes face to face with the fact that his wife has decided to leave him, though after the impending wedding of their daughter. Wilson also realises that he, still, dearly loves his wife and would go to any lengths to save his marriage and rectify his being an absentee husband in their hey-days.
He is the son-in—law of the legendary couple, Noah and Allie, who had a blissful married life of fifty years and it is exasperating for him to realise that he is extremely reticent about his feelings and no matter how hard he tries, it never seems enough.
Interspersed with the wedding preparations, there’s the undying struggle of a man to keep his better half from leaving him. Wilson tries everything and when ultimately, he is about to give into despair he finds solace in the words of Noah.
The plot of the book is an extremely unpredictable one and is filled with pieces of delight that would leave the reader smiling, long after turning those pages. There’s the urban chic and the retro-charm in the various tricks of the trade that Wilson gives a try to. It is amazing to see the inhibition and the overt amorous feelings of a middle-aged man.
The ending leaves you breathless for the sheer beauty of it, the reader who is still revelling in the fairy tale ending when the swans mating for life adage is given a whole new meaning.
Read this one, for it will re-affirm your faith in love and how it never dies or stays even long after death; if nothing else you would be blown away by the dash of incidents which portray the kind of love everyone cherishes and hopes for.
The writer is a correspondent of Youth Ki Awaaz.