Sparks first two novels, "The Notebook" and "Message in a Bottle," were both runaway bestsellers. "A Walk to Remember" will no doubt follow its predecessors to all the bestseller lists. Considering the time of publication, just before the holiday season, "A Walk to Remember" will prove a much appreciated gift for all ages from 17 to 70.
"A Walk to Remember" is a main selection of The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Crossings Book Club. It is also available as an unabridged Time Warner AudioBook read by the author. Foreign rights have been sold in Germany, Korea, Norway, and Turkey. The film rights were bought by Denise DiNovi at Warner Brothers, who also produced the #1 box office film version of "Message in a Bottle" starring Kevin Costner.
The setting of Sparks' latest love story is the small coastal town of Beaufort, North Carolina. Since Sparks and his family live in North Carolina, readers will understand why the author's exquisite descriptions of the setting are so immediate. Often, authors get carried away using too much descriptive ink, but with Sparks this is never a problem. His words depicting a sunset and moon rise near Bogue Banks, an island right off the coast, are spectacular. "The sun continued to lower itself, casting its glow as far as the eye could see, before finally, slowly, vanishing beneath the waves. The moon continued its slow drift upward, shimmering as it turned a thousand different shades of yellow, each paler than the last, before finally becoming the color of the stars."
In the Prologue, Landon Carter, the protagonist of this tender story, says, "When I was seventeen, my life changed forever." As Landon walks through the streets of his hometown he begins to think back to his senior year in highschool where his story begins. He tells readers, "My story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't be packaged into something neat and simple that people would immediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years, the people still living here who knew me that year accept my lack of explanation without question. My story in some ways is their story because it was something that all of us lived through."
Sparks' voice and style flow like a gentle stream carrying you into the past of Landon Carter. The story revealed, stuns the senses. Few writers can show and tell at the same time, but Sparks does just this.
He tells you his story with language that is so visual you feel you can reach out and touch the people or the places. Characterizations are deftly drawn showing people we've all known during our lifetime. The "wild boys" of the senior class who hide behind old oak trees and chide the pious Reverend Hegbert Sullivan. These same lads, remember you're in the year 1958, enjoy visiting the cemetery late at night to sit in a circle eating boiled peanuts and talking about all the things teenage boys talk about. Yes, they are callow youths with little sensitivity for the adults in their lives or their less fortunate peers. They look to the physical side of life and rarely, perhaps only on sundays when forced to attend old Hegbert's church, do they consider the spirituality within each of them.
Landon's father, Congressman Worth Carter, is a contrast to the good Reverend. In fact, their families have been feuding albeit quietly for generations. Then, there is Jamie Sullivan, the Bible reading, dowdy dressed, happy to a sickening degree, daughter of old Hegbert. Jamie wears her honey blond hair pulled back in a severe bun and has no friends even though she is known as the friendliest person in Beaufort and the most helpful to those in need. I mean, no senior in his right mind would invite Jamie to the Home Coming Dance, much less agrees to co-star with her in the Christmas pageant at the Baptist Church. So, how did it happen that both these things happened to Landon Carter?
On the evening of Beaufort's annual Christmas pageant, Landon's and Jamie's lives are linked together, and Landon does undergo a change that will forever alter the course of his life. In the weeks and months that follow, Landon discovers the truths about the nature of beauty, the joy of giving, the pain of loss, and most of all, the power of love.
Although the story sounds like a simple teenage love story, it is far from that. This is a tale that goes beyond age, something that brings back the past mixes it with the present and carries the reader into the future. The characters met, the values seen in practice, renew and warm the coldest heart. There are just too few books like this being written today.
Just as Landon tells you in the beginning, "This is my story, I promise to leave nothing out."
"First you will smile, and then you will cry—don't say you haven't been warned."
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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