FREE BOOKNOTES / SUMMARY - THE NOTEBOOK BY NICHOLAS SPARKS

WINTER FOR TWO

Summary

The novel returns to the present day as the narrator finishes reading the notebook. However, the woman in the bed does not look back at him while she stares out the window. In all these years, the daily pattern has not changed. He sees the visitors arrive each morning, and he wonders what secrets they keep. Then, he tells the reader that soon he will reveal some of his own.

The narrator is beginning to feel his age, saying he is as rusted as a junked car twenty years in the Everglades. The staff does their best to make him comfortable, but age always wins out. He reads every morning to the woman in the bed, because it is something he feels he must do. Not because it is his duty, but for another, more romantic, reason. However, in spite of spending their days together, the doctors will not allow them to spend their nights together. He understands why, but sometimes when the mood is right, he will sneak into her room and watch her sleep. For, if not for her, he would never have married, and when he looks into face, a face he knows better than his own, he knows he has meant as much, or more, to her.

The narrator then reveals that he has been married to this woman for almost forty-nine years, forty-five spent in the same bed, but separate rooms for the last four. He doesn’t sleep well without her, two hours a night if he’s lucky, but he knows that soon, it will be all over. She does not know this. His entries in his diary have become shorter and take little time to write these days. Time is growing shorter.

When he cannot see her in the evening, he spends his time as the “reader.” He goes from room to room visiting his friends and reading to those that he knows most need to hear his words. Sometimes, they ask him about his wife, and sometimes, he whispers about their adventures together at art shows in New York and Paris and the rave reviews from critics in every language. Sometimes, he just tells them that she is the same, and that’s when they turn away, reminded of their own mortality. So, he reads to them to let them know who he is. He knows that, if she could, his wife would accompany him on his nightly excursions, because she loved poetry so much. He observes, “Poetry brings great beauty to life, but also great sadness, and I’m not sure it’s a fair exchange for someone my age. A man should enjoy other things if he can; she should spend his final days in the sun. Mine will be spent by a reading lamp.”

Now, he reaches for his wife’s hand, and she responds with the familiar gesture of her thumb softly rubbing his finger. Finally, she turns to him and tells him that he had read a beautiful story. By this, he knows that this is going to be a good day, a very good day. She asks him important questions such as: “I’ve heard this before, haven’t I?” She loves the story, because it makes her less afraid. She also wonders if it’s true and if he knew these people. She even asks which one he finally married. The narrator always responds with vague answers so as not to upset or confuse her. He just says, “You’ll know. By the end of the day, you’ll know.”

He convinces her to take her medicine by taking his own as a pattern, and then, as they sit together, the birds begin to sing, just like the ones that had serenaded them all those years before. Then, she asks the question that always breaks his heart,” Who are you?” This question prompts him to tell the reader that they have lived at the Creekside Extended Care Facility for three years now. It had been her decision to come there so it would be easier for him. They had boarded up the home in which they had lived for all of their marriage, because they couldn’t stand the thought of selling it. Then, they had........

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