Tag-Archive for ◊ Note Book ◊

Author:
• Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Nicholas Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1965. He is the second of three children. His brother Michael is still alive, but his younger sister Danielle is deceased. His father was a professor and his mother was a housewife and then an optometrist’s assistant.

He majored in Business Finance and graduated from the University of Notre Dame with high honours in 1988.

After having been rejected by publishers and law schools, Nicholas Sparks worked in different fields, including estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products and starting his own manufacturing business. He was married in 1989 and lived in Sacramento before moving in 1992 to New Bern, North Carolina where he sold pharmaceuticals and where he is living today with his wife and five children.

Nicholas Sparks wrote his first novel, The Passing, in the summer of 1985 which was never published. His second unpublished novel, The Royal Murders, was written in 1989.

He is a prolific writer, he wrote fourteen books between 1996 and 2008:
The Note Book was published in 1996 and was made into a film.
Message in a Bottle in 1998 was also made into a film.
A Walk to Remember in 1999 was also a film.
The Rescue 2000.
A Bend in the Road in 2001.
Nights in Rodanthe 2002 was made into a film.
The Guardian 2003.
The Wedding 2003.
Three Weeks with my Brother 2004.
True Believer 2005.
At First Sight 2005.
Dear John 2006.
The Choice 2007.
The Lucky One 2008.

The Wedding is an easy to read, romantic story, about love between a husband, Wilson Lewis, the narrator, a hard working estate lawyer and his wife Jane. The novel recounts their relationship and the renewed efforts and vows orchestrated by the main character, Wilson Lewis, in an attempt to rekindle the lost romantic courtship, like in the early days of his relationship with Jane.

Wilson endeavours to win his wife back by trying hard to regain her love once more. After thirty years of marriage and after realizing that he loves Jane more than ever and therefore didn’t want to lose her, now that the romance and passion have gone out of their wedlock, he takes an important decision after forgetting his 29th wedding anniversary.

Wilson decides to spend the year leading up to his 30th anniversary secretly preparing a big surprise for the wife he adores, with the advice of his romantic father-in-law, Noah, and with the help of their three children, Leslie, Joseph and Anna.

He sets his mind to giving her the love and care that her parents gave to each other for fifty years. He also starts re-courting her and being attentive and considerate while planning to organise the wedding she always dreamed of having in order to make up for the simple civil wedding she had to settle for previously.

Anna will pretend to want to have her wedding on the same day as her parents wedding anniversary. The whole novel will be recounting all the preparation leading up to the big day until the happy, welcome and original twist at the end since the readers believe that the story is about Anna’s wedding all the way through the novel.

The author in the prologue asks the question : “Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change?” The epilogue gives the answer : “Yes, I decided, a man can truly change” if given a second chance, true love will always prevail.

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Author:
• Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Margaret Forster was born in Carlisle (England) in 1938. She was educated at the Carlisle and County High School for Girls. She won a scholarship to Sommerville College, Oxford where she was awarded an honors degree in History.

Margaret Forster married the writer and broadcaster Hunter Davies in 1960. Today they live between London and the lake district in England. They have three children, two daughters and a son. Their eldest daughter Caitlin also became a novelist.

Margaret Forster worked as a teacher in Islington, North London from 1961 to 1963. Starting from 1963 she worked as a novelist, a biographer, a contributor to newspapers and journals, and as a regular broadcaster for the BBC. She was also on the Arts Council literary panel for three years, and a chief non-fiction reviewer for the London Evening Standard.

Since 1964 Margaret Forster has been very prolific. She has written biographies, criticism, fiction and non-fiction. She has won many prizes and awards for her fiction and non-fiction works. Her bibliography is quite long, amongst her novels is the very successful 1965 Georgie Girl, which was made into a film in 1966, and a short lived Broadway musical in 1970.

Keeping the World Away is the story of a painting, the women who owned it, and the message it bestowed on them. In the prologue, the young school girl Gillian, introduces the original theme of the novel; how about if a painting had a real life of its own, according to who owned it, and what it conveyed to the people who looked at it.

Gillian says to her teacher after staring and staring at one painting in The Tate Gallery for a while and noticing that “something was there which she couldn’t quite grasp… The lives of the actual paintings, especially one of hers. I was wondering where it had been, who had owned it, who had looked at it. And other things – I mean,what effect did it have on the people who have looked at it ? What has it meant to them, how have they looked at it, did they feel the same as I did, did they see what I saw.”

Keeping The World Away portrays the struggle of female artists in finding their way, their independence and freedom. Margaret Forster who is a feminist, like her predecessor Virginia Wolf in A Room Of One’s Own, describes how women from the early days of the twentieth century aspired to gain recognition from a society monopolised by men. They wanted their financial freedom as well as their mental freedom. Virginia Wolf said : “There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of the mind.”

The novel is divided into six sections. The first section is a semi-fictionalised story based on a real painting, the corner of Gwen’s room in Paris, produced by Gwen John at the beginning of the twentieth century, and of the genuine Welsh artists Gwen John and her brother Augustus who where born two years apart in Haverfordwest, South Wales, Gwen in 1876 and Augustus in 1878 and both became artists. Gwen went to live in Paris and fell madly in love with the famous sixty four year-old French sculptor Rodin. Her passion was short lived by her lover who distanced himself from her young, “vigorous” and “voracious” needs.

Feeling lonely and forlorn, but at the same time serene, Gwen painted the quiet, and what she perceived as a peaceful corner of her Parisian attic room, yearning while waiting for her inattentive lover, Rodin to come and visit her, like in the past. She worked with a great deal of concentration and minutiae, putting her feeling and strong emotions into the painting, in order for her lover to understand her state of mind, and her longing for him: “she had wanted it to prove her own triumph. She had wanted to show Rodin that this was evidence of her transformation. She had imagined him walking into her room and being transfixed, overcome with admiration for what she had achieved.” Didn’t he tell her that “she must be composed and calm and let his own tranquillity enter her soul. Only then, he told her, would she do good work.”

Gwen waited patiently for Rodin who never went back to her. She offered the painting to her dear friend Ursula, who lost it during the journey back to England. From then on the saga of Gwen’s room corner painting begins.

The following five parts of the novel follow the journey of Gwen’s painting: The different women who owned it, loved it and shared the same aspiration felt by it, despite the different message the painting bestowed on each one of them, and how it had affected their lives, and that true art can have a life of its own.Charlotte, the dreamy, intellectual and art appreciator. Stella, the ex nurse and amateur artist. Lucasta, The artist specialised in portraits. Ailsa, Paul Mortimer’s oppressed wife. Then the novel ends as it started with Gillian who is now studying art in Paris and will be inheriting the Gwen’s painting after Mme Verlon’s death.

The painting of Gwen John’s room in Paris is today hanging in the Sheffield city art gallery in England.

The title of the book is taken from Gwen John’s own note book. She wrote : “Rules to keep the world away: Do not listen to people (more than is necessary); do not look at people (more than is necessary); have as little intercourse with people as possible.”

Gwen John (1876-1939) and her brother Augustus John (1878-1961) studied at the Slade school of Art in London. During their life time, Augustus became famous at an early age, while his introverted, solitary sister Gwen, who was obsessively in love with Rodin, remained in the limelight. Her paintings mainly depicting interiors, still-lifes and portraits were less appreciated than her brother’s bold style of painting. He was considered a great artist of his time. Recently,Gwen’s art became internationally renown while by contrast her brother’s paintings seem to have fallen into the shadow.

Margaret Forster’s combination of fact and fiction is done in a masterly way, with an easy-to-follow plot and a clear and limpid writing.

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