It has been a long time since I have taken to writing anything distantly substantial and today is perhaps my day to make amends. My blogspace till date has consisted mainly of poems, which I wrote without much of an intense thought or fervour in my childhood days. Today I look forward to do something much less creative by convention but in no measure less engaging in pursuit. I have just finished reading the book named “A WALK TO REMEMBER” by Nicholas Sparks and this is but an attempt to put the essence of that book in my own words.
The story is a first person narrative of the author in retrospect where he looks back at the time when he was in his senior school, at seventeen, and how a chain of events completely changed his life forever. From the reader’s point of view the book is not captivating from the onset but rather on the lines of a slow documentary which keeps the reader interested by its element of descriptive detailing. The time-frame the story belongs to puts it in the 1950s of America. North Carolina makes up for that idyllic setting as its springs and beaches fill up the senses of the avid reader.
Landon Carter, the boy in the story, belongs to an influential family of Beaufort, a small town where he was born and brought up. He goes to the senior school and gets elected as the student council President. On the eve of the ‘Thanksgiving day’ party he finds himself without a girl who can accompany her. Desperate to save his face he debates with himself and finally opts to approach the ‘ugly duckling’ of the class, Jamie Sullivan. She is someone who never gives a ‘no’ for an answer and hence complies. Their association is furthered by circumstance as they both meet again in their drama classes. Jamie, born to the righteous minister of the church embodies all that is ‘good and giving’ to the human race. She is not only kind in disposition but is also caring and good natured even to an ill-mannered ruffian. As the story unfolds, Landon gets to know Jamie from close quarters and discovers newfound respect for her and her virtues .In the process he also learns to be a giving person as he helps her to raise funds for buying Christmas presents for the children of an orphanage. They both identify themselves with the poor children in the orphanage because of their individually exclusive childhood which was deprived of parental love in one way or the other. A busy father in case of Landon and a mother who left Jamie at her birth to the care of her father forever. Landon, in simple terms transforms from being a boy to a responsible man in Jamie’s company and he pleases himself in this ensuing process.
Sparks weaves absorbingly a commentary of delicate human emotions, of tender, innocent teenage love and with ease takes the reader in his fold in no time. He not only makes the evolution of love inside two young hearts look credible to the reader but also draws empathy from them as to how this love finds its way to be actualised without even overtly asking for it. Slowly, the inner beauty of Jamie finds appreciation in Landon and he learns to adore the innately beatific qualities of Jamie and her set of values. Landon sees the angel that she actually is as time progresses, taking him unknowingly to graduating adoloscence.Gradually as the love blossoms between the two, the reader is lulled into a false sense of languorous bliss which is promptly dashed by a calamitous revelation by Jamie. The monotony of a ‘happy ending’ eludes the reader to his dismay and bewilderment.
Landon is shocked to discover that his love is dying of incurable leukemia. There is a terrible sense of loss that quickly eclipses the impending joy and happy ending the reader is to expect. Instead there is an excruciating wait for death and an abrupt end to what would have been ‘a lasting love story’. What comes as a twist in the tale is the realization in Landon that the only thing that can make Jamie happy is her 'great dream' of a grand marriage ceremony coming true and he does exactly that. He urges GOD for an unlikely miracle and through every passing moment senses the immense love he has in his heart for Jamie. A newfound respect, affection and longing for his lady love so compellingly overcomes the naiveté of youth that he decides to marry the dying Jamie. In the church the attendant crowd experiences to their great grief and relief a marriage of selflessness and passion which, sadly, is seemingly ephemeral. The WALK down the aisle with her father, which Jamie so longed for was at last a reality, against the sinister travesty that fate had so mercilessly designed for her. LOVE had had its say and it resonated in the thunderous applause that spontaneously greeted their union as if certifying the validity of true love though its protagonists be not as timeless as the concept itself. That WALK down the aisle for Jamie was almost a victory lap for the lasting faith in love that humans have and in recognition of what it can do to ameliorate hearts.
The book not only makes for absorbing reading but also is a tribute to the selfless teenage love and its inherent innocence that the world is so rapidly losing in its strides towards more ‘immediately realizable indulgences’. An absolutely exhilarating piece of writing which talks of the power and beauty of simplicity, virtues and surrender, the old school style. “A WALK TO REMEBER” is made ‘a read to remember’ by the fluidity of narration and the unassuming transparency of the eager emotions of youth that are essentially palpable when kept simple, lucid and subtle. The imagination of the reader is enduringly engaged; almost with mischievous intent by the author, at the very end, when he makes an oblique reference to the ‘miracle’ that he was made to believe in by the end of this story. As to what that ‘miracle’ was, I can only gleefully conjecture, at the expense of my rationale, as will many more readers be tempted to, for really this walk remains one to be remembered. If not forever, then for some time at least and that is where the author succeeds in his pursuit.
