The Notebook: A Book Review

I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life.

There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.

The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind it's a little bit of both, and no matter what how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that involves a great deal of my life and the path I've chosen to follow.

So once again, just as I do every day, I begin to read the notebook aloud, so that she can hear it, in the hope that the miracle that has come to dominate my life will once again prevail.

And maybe, just maybe, it will.

-Duke (Miracles, p.1-5)

I write this letter by candlelight as you lie sleeping in the bedroom we have shared since the day we were married. And though I can't hear the sounds of your slumber, I know you are there, and soon I will be lying next to you again as I always have. And I will feel your warmth and your comfort, and your breaths will slowly guide me to the place where I dream of you and the wonderful man you are.

I see the flame beside me and it reminds me of another fire from decades ago, with me with your soft clothes and you in your jeans. I knew then we would always be together, even though I wavered the following day. My heart had been captured, roped by a southern poet, and I knew inside that it had always been yours.

Who was I to question a love that rode on shooting stars and roared like crashing waves? For that is what it was between us then and that is what it is today.

I love you for many things, especially your passions, for they have always been those things which are most beautiful in life. Love and poetry and fatherhood and friendship and beauty and nature. And I am glad you taught the children these things, for I know their lives are better for it. They tell me how special you are to them and every time they do, it makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive.

So I love you so deeply, so incredibly much that I will find a way to come back to you despite my disease, I promise you that. And this is the story comes in. When I am lost and lonely, read this story - just as as you told it to the children - and know that in some way, I will realize it's about us.

And perhaps, just perhaps, we will find a way to be together again.

-Allie's Letter to Duke (Winter for Two p. 203-207)

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