A walk to remember

A Walk to Remember

By Nicholas Sparks

Summary:

Landon and Jamie live in two completely different worlds. Landon is something of a rebel, he soaps up car windows with his friends and eats boiled peanuts in the graveyard behind the church, whereas Jamie takes care of her widowed father, volunteers at the local orphanage and always carries a bible with her schoolbooks. They live just a few streets away from each other and go to the same school but hardly know each other. This changes when Landon needs a date for the homecoming dance. All the girls he knows already have dates and finally he has no other possibility than asking Jamie.

She agrees, although her father, the town’s Baptist Minister, doesn’t like Landon at all.

After the dance Jamie asks Landon to play one of the main roles in a Christmas play that her father has written. Landon doesn’t want to but he agrees nevertheless.

When the rehearsals start, Landon and Jamie spend a lot of time together, and the more Landon knows about Jamie, the more he understands and even likes her. On the evening when the play is performed, he falls in love with her. She seems to feel in the same way, and it looks like the perfect happy ending. But destiny has another plan for them...

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My opinion:

I liked the story a lot. The way how Landon describes his family, Jamie and her father, his teachers and his friends is pretty funny. At the beginning the whole story is funny and I thought I knew how it would end, but suddenly everything was different. The ending of the book is really sad, but I liked it nevertheless. It’s not a love story like all the others. It’s not kitschy but sensitive, romantic and deeply moving. It’s all the time very exciting, once I thought I knew how the story would go on, something happened I didn’t expect at all.

The book was also easy to understand and sometimes I couldn’t stop reading. It’s written in a way that makes you wonder how the story goes on, that makes you laugh and maybe also cry. The parts I liked best were those where Landon describes the other people. I also liked the ending, about which I won’t tell anything. It’s just the ending that makes the book as interesting as it is and it’s the ending that distinguishes this story from other stories.

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Extract from the book:

That night the rehearsal was at the Playhouse. It was the last one before the show opened, and we had a lot to do. Right after school, the boys in drama class had to load all the props in the classroom into the rented truck to take them to the Playhouse. The only problem was that Eddie and I were the only two boys, and he’s not exactly the most coordinated individual in history. We d’ be walking through a doorway, carrying one of the heavier items, and his Hooville body would work against him. At every critical moment when I really needed his help to balance the load, he d’ stumble over some dust or an insect on the floor, and the weight of the prop would come crashing down on my fingers, pinching them against the doorjamb in the most painful way possible. “S-s-sorry” he d’ say. “D-d-did th-th-that hurt?” I d’ stifle the curses rising in my throat bite out, “Just don’t do it again”. But he couldn’t stop himself from stumbling around anymore than he could stop the rain from falling.

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Interview with Esther:

D: Esther, you read the book A Walk to Remember, why did you choose to read it?

E: Because my host-mom told me that it was really good.

D: Did you like it?

E: Yes, I liked it a lot!

D: Which character did you like best?

E: That’s hard…Jamie is a nice girl, but she’s too nice! And Landon, he’s mean in the beginning, but by the end of the book he’s a really cool guy.

D: Which part did you like best?

E: I liked it when Landon describes people, that’s so funny!

D: What is, in your opinion, the message of the book?

E: That you shouldn’t judge people before you get to know them.