The Notebook is a 1996 romantic novel by American novelist Nicholas Sparks. The novel was later adapted into a popular 2004 film of the same name. Background The Notebook was Nicholas Sparks first published novel and written over a time period of six months in 1994. Literary agent Theresa Park discovered Sparks by picking the book out of her agency's slush pile and reading it. Park offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for the book from the Time Warner Book Group, and the novel was published in October 1996. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of release. The Notebook was a hardcover best seller for more than a year. In interviews, Sparks said he was inspired to write the novel by the story of his wife's grandparents, who had been married for more than 60 years when he met them. In The Notebook, he tried to express the long romantic love of that couple. Plot The novel opens with Noah Calhoun, an old man, reading to a woman in a nursing home. He tells her the following story: Noah, 24, returns from World War II to his town of New Bern, North Carolina. He finishes restoring an antebellum-style house, after his father's death. Meanwhile, Allie, 24, sees the house in the newspaper and decides to pay him a visit. They are meeting, again, after a 7-year separation, which followed their brief but passionate summer romance when her family was visiting the town. They were separated by class, as she was the daughter of a wealthy family, and he worked as a laborer in a lumberyard. Seeing each other brings on a flood of memories and strong emotions in both of them. They have dinner together and talk about their lives and the past. Allie learns that Noah had written letters to her for one year after their breakup. She realizes that her mother hid the letters so that Allie could never receive them and would conclude that Noah had forgotten about her. They talk about what could have happened between them without her mother's interference. At the end of the night, Noah invites Allie to come back the next day and promises her a surprise. She decides to see him again. During this time, her fiancé, Lon, tries to reach her at the hotel. When