Comprehensive information and links about The Notebook

The Notebook is a love story by Nicholas Sparks. The story opens present-day in a nursing home, where an elderly man reads bits and pieces of a love story of two young lovers from a notebook to his female companion. Young Noah Calhoun, a lumberyard worker, is instantly smitten with fifteen-year-old Allie Hamilton, the daughter of a well-to-do Southern family who is spending the summer at their vacation home in 1940s North Carolina. Allie's parents disapprove of their relationship, and Noah and Allie are separated. However, Noah and Allie's paths cross again seven years later, but Allie is engaged to wealthy Lon Hammond. The Notebook film adaptation became a "sleeper hit" in Summer 2004 and put Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling on the map in Hollywood as "up-and-comers."

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Film version

The film version was released June 25, 2004. It starred James Garner, Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Marsden, and Gena Rowlands and was directed by Rowlands' real-life son, Nick Cassavetes.

The film takes place in South Carolina in the fictional city of Seabrook, and the novel takes place in New Bern, North Carolina.In the film Noah dated a neighbor named Martha Shaw, and in the book their relationship is simply platonic. However in the novel he did have a serious girlfriend after Allie who was very similar to the Martha character. She was completely written out of the film.The term "Notebooked" has been used by TV Series, One Tree Hill. It is used to describe a girl who makes a boy sad and emotional from watching the film. In a sentence this word is used: "I notebooked him."The novel was loosely based on the real life relationship of the grandparents of Nicholas Sparks' wife.