The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

Okay, I admit it.  I read a Nicholas Sparks novel. (Heavy sigh.) I think I knew exactly what I was getting myself into, but I was tired and wanted something easy to breeze through.  Well, it was easy all right.  I feel like some of my friends who commented that after reading Mockingjay they "wanted those lost hours back".  I didn't feel that way about Mockingjay, but excepting the fact that there's always something to be learned from every reading experience, reading 'The Choice' was definitely a few hours in which you're transported to a time that - let's be frank - doesn't exist.

The kind of time that is constantly smoothed over with a dreamy, sunset kind of feel.  Where people fall in love over a weekend, instantly know they are meant to be together, have a few arguments that you know don't matter (and you feel were thrown in as an afterthought with a nod to reality), and generally have (and constantly recognise they have) the best [fill in the blank] in the world.  Life, husband, wife, children, house, small town, job, talent, boat, family.  Phrases are thrown about that you feel grown men never say, much less think.  Guys ruminate reflectively on their lives.  Women are somehow both fiercely independent and desperately needy, whilst remaining incredibly beautiful at all times.  Beautiful, mind you, with the girl-next-door meets supermodel kind of beauty, and of course they have no idea how beautiful they are (but they manage to be casually confident in it).  You see where this is going?  No one in the entire novel is really ugly. Or annoying. Or bad. And that's where the distance from real life comes.  Granted, we don't read novels to live in the real world.  Even Jane Austen admitted that in order to find a man like Mr Darcy, she had to make him up.  But something's not quite right.

Naturally, there's a Crisis that occurs about halfway through the book.  This is common to all of Nicholas Sparks' novels (I say this not because I've ready any others, but because I've seen a few of the films - again not the best hours I've spent in my life).  There's the fairy-tale stage, followed by a short 'real life' stage (but not really real), and then the Crisis occurs. Someone gets cancer. Or leukemia. Or goes to war.  Or is in a coma.  Something drastic, and it's hard and challenging and burdening....but you (well, definitely I) never connect with the hero. Or the heroine, or anybody.  The only person in the entire book I almost liked was the hero's sister, who had a caustic wit and slung around sarcasm with her constant energy.  Naturally, she was gorgeous and talented and had a PhD and a guy who loved her although she wasn't sure if she loved him back, and she never once lacked even an ounce of confidence. I don't know why I liked her, she was like a Greek goddess in the modern woman's body.  Must have been the sarcasm.  But the hero, her brother, just sort of mooned around the whole time replaying moments in his mind, and (I doubt I'm ruining anything for anyone here, since I'd highly recommend you not bother reading this or any other Sparks novel) naturally gets exactly what he wants in the end, and they all live happily ever after.

The funny thing is, I'm not opposed in the slightest to people getting a happily ever after. (Okay, maybe on some of my bad days I am, a little, but that's just jealousy.)  And I love reading good fiction that brings it about.  But I think what frustrates me so much about this kind of novel is that you never connect to the suffering.  It's as though they suffer at a distance, in a disembodied way, and you're not allowed - even through the pages of the book - to come in and feel it with them.  Perhaps the author has never suffered to the depths of his soul as his imaginary characters have. I don't know - I could be completely wrong. Perhaps he has, and he's describing it the best way he knows how.  But if he hasn't, and his life has been pretty good, and he had a happy childhood and went to university and met his wife there and married her and had some children and worked a few jobs and wrote some novels...well...that explains a few things.  Because I admire so many authors for their incredible flights of imagination, but I'll tell you this from real experience: suffering can't be imagined.  Not the down-deep, life's-dreams-gone-wrong, bitter heartache of despair suffering.  You have to go through it.  I've had a little, and I have friends who've had a lot.  And I just get the odd feeling, reading this novel at least, that as hard as he tries, there's still a little sunset glow left.  And unfortunately that's the first thing to go in deep-down-suffering.  Oh, it comes back - praise God, it comes back.  But the moments when it's gone with no hope on the horizon, well, that's the bit I felt was missing for a novel like this to really connect. 

So, read it if you like....nah. Don't. Do something real with your time.  Phone your mother, or your sister, or a good friend.  Write a long email.  Bake a cheesecake.  Go to church.  Clean the house.  Just sit in a comfortable chair and watch the world go by.  You'll be better off.  And if a genuine Crisis comes into your life (or already has), face it with all the love and joy and defiance and spirit that's in you.