The Notebook: Book vs. Movie
Compare The Notebook (2004) with Nicholas Sparks’s 1996 book. Vote, see faithfulness results, and check recommendations for both versions.
From Books Adapted
How it was adapted
The movie gives the first summer much more time
The movie adapts the novel across all three periods of Noah and Allie's relationship: their first summer, their reunion and their old age. It changes the balance between them.
Sparks has estimated that their first summer takes up five percent or less of the book. The reunion accounts for most of it, with roughly a third devoted to their older selves. The movie expands the young romance to around half its running time, then divides the rest between the reunion and the nursing home.
Where the book came from
The grandparents behind the story never read the book
Sparks drew on his then-wife's grandparents when writing about a love that lasts into old age. Their relationship inspired Noah and Allie's devotion, rather than supplying a biography for the novel or movie.
Her grandmother had dementia and no longer recognized her husband. Sparks told Bookreporter that what he wanted to preserve was how the couple felt about each other through those later years. Both grandparents died in 1993, before he began writing the novel.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Nicholas Sparks
- Year
- 1996
- Pages
- 244Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 6 hr 3 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Barry Bostwick
Fourteen years after their summer together, Allie visits Noah at the North Carolina home he has restored. She is engaged to someone else, but the visit makes her question whether she ever stopped loving him.
- Director
- Nick Cassavetes
- Writer
- Jeremy Leven, Nicholas Sparks, Jan Sardi
- Year
- 2004
- Runtime
- 2 hr 3 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands
- Genre
- coming-of-age, Drama, Romance
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
An elderly man reads a woman the story of Noah and Allie, young lovers separated by her family’s objections and the war. When they meet again, Allie must decide whether to keep her wedding plans or return to her first love.
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