If you’ve been following along here lately, you know all about the HORRIBLE DARE in which Trish challenged me to read a Nicholas Sparks novel. I completed the dare during this weekend’s Read-A-Thon by reading and tweeting about The Last Song. Check out those tweets with my customized #IHeartTheSpark hashtag. Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me explain a bit about where all of this came from.
I’ve never really given much thought to Nicholas Sparks. Sure, I’ve seen The Notebook (still mad at my sister for forcing that one on me), and in my bookselling career, I’ve watched a virtually endless parade of sentimental teenage girls who haven’t yet discovered Jodi Picoult and little old ladies whose book clubs read only Nicholas Sparks novels, but I’ve never really done more than roll my eyes and move along. I may be a snobby reader—a fact I’m willing to admit—but at the core, I just want people to read.
Even if it means they read Nicholas Sparks or James Patterson or Dan Brown or, god forbid, Stephenie Meyer.
(Yep, there’s that book snob thing creeping in again.)
Usually, when people rave about some author I consider commercial or pedestrian, I just smile and nod and then suggest something that is, at least in my opinion, similar but better. It’s the gateway drug concept I’ve mentioned before. Your teenage daughter got hooked on poorly written vampire romance novels? Well, the good news is that the characters in those novels actually read classic literature, and you might be able to hook your kid into it that way. You get the idea.
So Nicholas Sparks has just always been one of those authors whose existence and success I tolerated but tried to ignore. He just wasn’t on my radar.
But that all changed at the National Book Festival, when Nicholas Sparks spoke in between John Irving (a hard act to follow for anyone) and Junot Diaz and really, well, made an ass of himself (read my wrap-up here). If you don’t believe me, or if you’re just morbidly curious, you can watch the video yourself.
The whole thing was kind of appalling, but I had a great time joking about it with the other bloggers in attendance, and when the subject came up at our bloggers’ dinner, someone suggested that I should have to read a Nicholas Sparks book. Stupidly, I agreed that if someone else would pick it out and pay for it, I would read it.
So that’s how I found myself reading The Last Song this weekend.
The rest of this post is spoilerific, so if you don’t want to know, read no further.
Now, I know you’re just dying to know what this book is about, so let me tell you. But first, you should know that before this was a book, it was an idea….an idea that Nicholas Sparks sold to Disney for a movie….a movie starring Miley Cyrus. And Nicholas Sparks wrote the movie before he wrote the book (so, this is a BOOK based on a MOVIE, how wonderful), and Miley Cyrus actually named the main character. Ronnie (short for Veronica).
So, Ronnie is eighteen and has just graduated from high school in New York City. It’s been three years since her parents’ divorce, and she is still mad at her father, to whom she hasn’t spoken since the divorce. But now Ronnie’s mom is forcing her and her little brother Jonah to spend the summer with their father in Wilmington, North Carolina near Wrightsville Beach. (I know, I know. A Nicholas Sparks book set near the beach? Unheard of.) Most kids would be stoked about a free summer at the beach, but Ronnie is far from it.
Have I mentioned yet that Ronnie, in all of her angsty sullenness, wears a lot of black and has a purple streak in her hair? Oh yeah, she’s bad….but unlike all of the other kids in her crowd, she doesn’t drink or do drugs or have sex.
On her first real day at the beach, Ronnie, dressed in her usual black, stumbles upon a volleyball game, and whaddya know, the superhot boy playing volleyball trips right into her, causing her to spill soda all over herself. And that’s how she meets Will.
In the same day, she also meets a partner in angst named Galadriel (but she goes by Blaze….as if that’s any better?) and an apparently sociopathic creeper named Marcus who performs fire shows on the boardwalk.
Now, I’m hazy on the details because 1) I was reading this in the middle of the read-a-thon and 2) I honestly wasn’t giving the book my complete attention, but somewhere in there, Ronnie and Blaze have a disagreement that results in Blaze setting Ronnie up to be charged for shoplifting (and it’s not the first time Ronnie’s been charged for shoplifting…gasp!), and Ronnie and Will start dating and falling in love and kissing. A lot of kissing. But ONLY kissing. Because that’s so realistic for horny 18-year-olds.
And somewhere in there, Ronnie finds out that Will’s family is rich, which turns her off, but Will is so sweet and earnest and down-to-earth that she gets it over it….and somewhere else in there Ronnie discovers a nest of loggerhead turtle eggs near her father’s beach house and decides she needs to sleep outside to protect the nest from predators (and Sparks mentions not once but TWICE that only one in every thousand baby turtles will survive to maturity…see, these books are educational!), and the scene where the turtles hatch is actually kind of sweet.
But then there’s all the stuff about how Ronnie refuses even to look at the piano in her father’s house (he’s a former concert pianist who taught at Juilliard and tutored Ronnie from a very young age) and feels SO MISUNDERSTOOD and doesn’t know what to do with her life.
And, of course, there’s the inevitable HORRIBLE TRAGEDY that I’ve heard all of Sparks’s books contain. This one involves Blaze unknowingly spilling lighter fluid on herself and then being horribly burned during one of Marcus’s shows on the boardwalk (betcha didn’t see that coming, since her name refers to fire and all). But wait! There’s more!
RONNIE’S DAD HAS CANCER!
He’s known about it for several months, of course, and it was the reason he asked Ronnie’s mom to send her and Jonah to N.C. for the summer, but he only reveals it to the kids at the end of the summer, right after the baby turtles hatch and Ronnie is finally starting to feel like her life is going to be okay.
So, Ronnie’s dad has cancer, and then Ronnie finds out that Will has been keeping a very big secret, so they have a fight and stop speaking to each other, and Ronnie hunkers down to care for her dying father, and that part is actually kind of heartbreaking.
Have I mentioned yet that the chapters alternate between several characters’ points of view?
As Ronnie’s angsting it out over Will and her father and Blaze’s unfortunate accident, we’re also getting a play-by-play of her father Steve’s existential crisis and search for God in his life. Steve does a lot of Bible reading and takes a lot of walks with Pastor Harris and just can’t figure out why he’s not feeling God’s presence in his life……but as he spends his dying days with Ronnie and reflects on it all, he realizes that God is everywhere and he’s been experiencing it all along.
So Nicholas Sparks has given us teenage romance, tragedy, illness, death, and RELIGION!
Wonderful.
By the way, if you’re curious about the title, it refers to a song Ronnie’s father had been trying to write for a while but couldn’t get quite right….while he’s in the hospital, Ronnie knocks down the plywood wall her father built to keep her from having to look at the piano (really) and finishes the song, and then she plays it for him.
Then he dies, and Ronnie moves back to New York, takes up the piano again, auditions for Juilliard, and gets back together with Will, who has decided to transfer to Columbia from Vanderbilt.
After reading The Last Song, I can sort of understand why people read this crap stuff. I suppose it’s like the literary equivalent of watching Steel Magnolias when you need a good cry. But it’s just so obviously manipulative.
I say “obviously” because really, all fiction is intended to manipulate our emotions. But what makes a book (or an author) good is how subtly, how skillfully, that manipulation is done. Reading this book, I felt like I could picture Sparks in his office, clasping his hands in front of himself a la Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, thinking “Yes, yes….this is the part that’s really going to make them cry.”
And frankly, I just don’t appreciate that.
It’s cheap. It’s too easy. It assumes one’s readers are not capable of understanding subtext or of seeing things coming. (Did I mention all of the awful foreshadowing in this book?) Does Nicholas Sparks think I just fell off the turnip truck?
Am I not supposed to notice that the book reads like it was written to follow a movie and that the characters speak in cliches and that the writing is clunky? (My friend Mark, the evil genius behind I Hate Your Book, ran the e-book of The Last Song through text analysis software and found out that the words in this book average only 1.45 syllables each!) That whole thing about how writers are supposed to SHOW and not TELL? Sparks could use a refresher on that.
And it just drove me crazy that I knew the main character was going to be Miley Cyrus. Not only did I have to read 400 pages of drivel (pages, I should note, that contain rather large font and spacing), I had to read them with Miley’s voice in my head. Yea gods.
But it’s over now, and I’ve fulfilled my snark quota for quite a while.
And that’s the story of how I read a Nicholas Sparks book.
Filed under: Book Reviews | Tagged: #iheartthespark, Book Reviews, books, fiction, horrible dare challenge, nicholas sparks, the last song
[...] My horrible dare is complete! [...]
Yikes!
The irony of a girl named Blaze catching on fire. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. (You feeling my sarcasm?)
I’m putting money on Ronnie/Miley singing some sappy song in the movie.
At least now you can say, “I HAVE read it” when someone tries to defend it to you. I don’t care if people read junk like this. I just want to shout, “There’s better stuff out there!” I recently had to bite the bullet and read Twilight for that reason…
Phew! You made it through to the other side.
Holy too much going on batman!
Seriously did the story need to have all of that in it? Egads, cut that sucker down by a few hundred pages and tell one really in depth story instead of ten peripherals.
I’ve watched a couple of Sparks based movies but I’ve not read any of the novels and honestly this doesn’t encourage my to do so. I’m not a book snob but yea I need some focus.
Woo, well done on that! The whole emotionally manipulative thing is what has bothered me about his books. It’s like they’re all calculated to make you cry. (My mom is a fan, so I’ve read a few.) I’m not at all a book snob, but I just can’t stand that.
I kind of like the movie of The Notebook as a guilty pleasure movie, but I can’t stand any of his other movies and I’m terrified of his books. I hate the obviously manipulative thing too, especially in books. I’m not as into movies, so I mind it less there, plus they’re usually shallower by definition than a book. But, HOORAY! YOU’RE DONE!
Bless you for making my day!
I can’t help but think it could make an interesting movie. I may go see it just for laughs. Congrats completing the challenge! =)
While conducting the text analysis, I felt strangely compelled to read some of it, despite far superior reading material (Audrey Niffenegger, Dave Eggers and a box of Cornflakes) lying around nearby. Now I know how a novelization of The Young and the Restless might read.
This was great. Yes, he’s amnipulative and not a great writer but there are times when I need sentimentality and pure mushiness. Sparks is a secret pleasure that I turn to for that. But Shhhh. Don’t tell.
The Notebook is one of my FAVORITE movies but the book wasn’t that great.
LOL.
I’m not a snob about my reading, and read Audrey Niffenegger and Nora Roberts during the read-a-thon. I’ve never picked up a Sparks book (or movie), but I’m pretty sure your review was much more fun!
manipulation…yes, I would agree with that.
I read The Last Song too, my first and last Sparks, out of curiosity. It read like he wrote it with a check list of needed ingredients…good girl, bad girl, bad boy, good girl, cute critter, tear jerking sick dad…
That being said…I am not really a book snob. Hey, I love the mystery books, so how can I be. I know how many, mistakenly, look down on that genre and others.
Is this book “bad”? well, it is not my taste, but it is pretty well written, love the cover and I can see where some people…let’s admit it, a lot of people..will get pleasure from reading it. And as you said, i am always happy to see people read. Yes, let’s hope it is a gateway to what we might think are ‘better’ books for them. If not…at least they are getting pleasure from reading and that is what it is all about, isn’t it?
Glad to see you survived your meeting, your second one actually, with Mr. Sparks!
You know, I was actually disappointed I missed Mr. Sparks at the festival — untiI I heard everyone talking about it at dinner!
LOL. Oh my.
I’ve read a few Sparks books, I’ll admit, but all of them when I was in high school. A Walk To Remember — the novel, not the movie (which I actually like) — had such a bizarre religious element I never saw coming, and Nights In Rodanthe was, as you mentioned, so obviously manipulative.
A friend of mine was compared books by Sparks to the paintings by Thomas Kinkade — prettily packaged and produced to provide “mass” appeal, but lacking any real substance. That might sound a bit harsh… but, honestly, I can totally see it.
I can totally see it, too! And I think it’s fair to have been a Sparks fan in high school. I didn’t read him back then, but I read a whole lot of crap about which I now say, “Well, I just didn’t know any better.”
LOVED it!!!! i find it hilarious that i just heard from some older women (50-ish) who love Mr. Sparks works and just gushed about how this is one of his best and how he knows teens so well.
*gags*
I’m still laughing! This is one of the funniest reviews that I’ve ever read in my entire life. Because I can feeeeeeel your hatred coming through my computer screen.
I’m so sorry you had to suffer, but now if anyone suggests it to you, you can look them in the eye and say “Damnit, I’ve done that once, and I’d rather not ever pick up a book than read a Spark.”
Best part of the review by the way: Does Nicholas Sparks think I just fell off the turnip truck?
You deserve a snark award for next years BBAW for this one.
I still haven’t finished it and I’m not sure I’ll bother. I read one other book of his and it wasn’t as bad as this one. At least I didn’t think so at the time but that was years ago.
I love it!! You finished your dare and made us all laugh, too – mission accomplished.
And now you never have to read another Sparks novel again.
This was great! His stuff really is emotionally manipulative. I’m a book snob too in some ways
Glad I’m not alone in my relative snobbiness. I mean, everybody needs brain candy sometimes, and I get that. My problem is with people who think books like this are the apex of literature.
That would not have been the Sparks book I would’ve read…sounds utterly sugary…so much so that my teeth are hurting. Now, if you had read The Notebook I think you may have actually liked that one!!
Good gravy–it’s screamingly funnily awful. As I Tweeted you during the Readathon…thank you for enduring this for us.
j
Heee! I told my book club about your dare tonight, and particularly about Blaze and my rule of good writing: “Characters named Blaze must never catch, fight, or be involved with fire in any way.” One of my compatriots did me one better, though: “Any character named Blaze must be a horse.”
Well, I have never read Nicholas Sparks (I have not even seen The Notebook) and I must say after reading this — I have zero desire to do so (although I didn’t really have a desire in the first place).
I had no idea that this was a book written as a movie first with Miley Cyrus as the lead. UGH!!!
I love the Notebook!!! All that Gosling goodness.
I don’t particularly like his books or his emotional manipulation, though.
I liked his previous books. I know there are possibly thousands of writers that write better than him but the point is that he provides entertainment. And part of why we read books is because we want entertainment.
I read a lot of literary fiction which is probably too many levels above his books but I like Nicholas Sparks (at least his previous books) and I can proudly say that
This was a GREAT review! I have read at times that some percentage of the American people reads 1-2 books per year. Sparks, Dan Brown, and the other authors you mention target this crowd with monosyllabic prose, dumbed-down and obvious plots, and cardboard characters.
People who read so few books don’t know any better. In fact, their reading drought probably makes the books seem good and richly textured, in comparison with the reality shows and “Gray’s Anatomy” that usually fills their entertainment hours.
Good for Sparks for tapping into this market, I guess, but I loved your lampoon just the same.
Have you recovered from the horror yet?
I was afraid to watch him make an a** of himself, so now I’m just wondering what on earth he did. I may have to go watch the video, after I’ve summoned up some courage. In the meantime . . . we were just discussing Nicholas Sparks in my book group and I said this is why I gave him up, forever:
“He’s unreasonably sad — as in, he sets up an entire romance just to kill someone off; he writes very deliberately tragic books. I hate that. But, I’ve mostly rejected him because his writing sucks (from a
purely technical standpoint) and I can only bear bad writing if there’s a good plot.”
Sounds like you and I are in agreement. At least you gave him a shot, though! I think it’s good to try authors that are a little out of our comfort zone, even if we just end up feeling like our suspicions have been confirmed.
Well, I (admittedly) did not go into this with an open mind. I was pretty sure I was going to hate it, and I did, but it was a fun exercise and certainly provided some entertainment.
Okay, I went back and read your post and realized I remember reading some of it but I have a terrible memory since the Potassium Fiasco of 2002 (I nearly died of low potassium) so forgive me for forgetting. So, he’s about the same as a speech writer as he is as a novelist. My opinion only. Not a fan. Nope.
I think I just threw up in my mouth. I picked you a good one!
I don’t know whether to laugh or apologize. I think I’ll laugh.
You’re awesome! More people should challenge you to horrible dares!
I find this review particularly irritating. It seems to me that being a self-proclaimed book snob yet wanting people to JUST READ is a complete juxtaposition.
I think it’s much more enjoyable to read than to watch TV or a movie – most of the time I can be found reading instead of sitting like a drone on the couch. But reading, like television is meant to provide entertainment to it’s readers. While Sparks and Stephanie Meyer may not write as eloquently as your snobby authors do, they provide plots that are entertaining to the masses- and they make big bucks doing it.
Although I have disliked many books, I wouldn’t dare criticize them with the arrogance you portrayed in this post. While a book may not be my cup of tea, others may enjoy it and HEY THEY ARE READING RIGHT? All in all, I believe that your review is pretty worthless as you didn’t approach the novel objectively…although I don’t think Nicholas will mind because he’s laughing his way to the bank.
You’re certainly correct that he’s laughing his way to the bank, and I’ve said something very similar about Dan Brown. There is something to be said for anything that gets people to read, but I think it’s sad that some people never get to discover the really wonderful books out there because the market is just swarmed with formulaic, commercial things like this. And you’re correct that there’s a bit of contradiction inherent in being a snobby reader but also wanting people to just read. I am snobby in what I select for myself, but it’s not like I would stop being friends with someone because she happened to like a Nicholas Sparks book. To me, part of loving books is wanting to share them with other people, and I want as many people as possible to get to read the really amazing ones.
Nicholas Sparks falls into the same category as Danielle Steel when I was in high school and Mary Higgins Clark. I read his first 2 books along time ago and thought they were okay but then I realized that every book was just going to be the same. You were very brave to do this,lol. I think that a book based on a movie for Miley Cyrus makes me ill!
I have to say, I’m quite glad you were forced to read a Nicholas Sparks book so that you could write this very amusing review and I could read it. : )
I have to admit that I liked Nicholas Sparks books from the past, but his recent stuff doesn’t do a lot for me… He’s not the best writer in the world and not my normal stuff, but I have read him and enjoyed him at times….
[...] book that I am giving up on is The Last Song. I read it with Rebecca during her #IHeartTheSpark Twitter read-along and I just could not get through it. Not even for [...]
OK, I am SOOO on the end of this conversation. I must have been on my cruise when you posted it. Jennifer Conner was in Orlando and I had dinner with her last night, and we spent some time talking about this whole thing. (BTW, she told me what she wrote to you while Mr. Sparks was speaking, which caused a huge eruption of belly-laughter from us). First, anybody who would throw their panties at John Irving is not snobby, she has good common sense!
You are spot-on with the manipulation. Although every book is designed to get some kind of emotional reaction, Sparks is just freaking OVERT. I feel slimy and used when I finish his books. Which by the way, I’ve read two or three, and that was the end of that.
I am a little behind on the Nicholas Sparks dare but Sandy told me about it and I got a good kick out of it. I am appalled that Sparks spoke in between Irving and Diaz but nort surprised he acted or sounded like a fool. I have only read one of his books and that was many years ago. It was a christmas story of his. The holidays are the only time when I sometimes read bad, sappy, poorly written romance type drivel, although it’s been several years since I was able to stomach stories like Sparks’ even in a holiday party setting.
Anyway, I got a kick out of the dare and this post. and love that your friend Mark has a site called “I Hate Your Book. That is very funny!
I hope you have long since recovered from NS’s book!
~ Amy
I just saw the video. LOLs at him saying he tries to make each novel different than the one before it.
But kudos to him for the tight black T-shirts. I expected it to have the slogan “WELCOME TO THE GUN SHOW” on it.
I have not read any of his books. I have never had room in my library tote.
Ha, this is the best review I’ve ever read of a Nicholas Sparks book. Especially this point you make:
“I say “obviously” because really, all fiction is intended to manipulate our emotions. But what makes a book (or an author) good is how subtly, how skillfully, that manipulation is done.”
Dead on.
I must admit, anytime his books are made into a movie, I am intrigued and want to see it. I tend to like them (I love love The Notebook), but something about it being on the big screen where you can be visually obvious and just enjoy it for a cry-worthy story seems to make it ok to me. If it’s in book form, I just yell or throw the book, because he really has no subtlety at ALL and it’s so trite.
I just came across your blog for the first time today and was drawn into reading the whole post and all the comments while I’m (theoretically) at work. It was just too funny to stop. I feel exactly the same way about Sparks. I read A Walk To Remember several years ago while I was traveling in India. I’d been out of American for a couple of months and found an English language bookstore and just started picking things up and reading them. I didn’t know who Sparks was but got far enough in the book that once I realized how trashy it was I thought it would be better to push through to the end. And then was supremely annoyed by the melodramatic death bait and switch. The whole thing was so over done and trite. I was horrified to think that this might be someone’s impression of America. I’ve felt more than a little dirty for having read it ever since but reading your review was very cleansing.
If it makes anyone feel better, most of the rest of the English books available were classic literature. Actually I used my rec-reading time while I traveled to take a little informal great lit course and I read A Tale of Two Cities, the Prince and the Pauper, Around the World in Eighty Days and the Three Musketeers (which was translated, obviously). But I guess Sparks gets everywhere. If I went to the same little bookshop today I could probably find Twilight.