The Notebook and the Romance Genre : An Investigation of The Notebook As A Romance Novel

Abstract: Critics and readers often consider Nicholas Sparks’ novel The Notebook to be a romance novel, while Sparks himself considers it a love story. Sparks claims that there are no similarities between the two genres. Therefore, this paper investigates the differences and similarities between the romance genre and the love story genre, while simultaneously exploring The Notebook’s storyline, the characterization, and the marketing surrounding the book in order to understand the novel’s classification. The purpose is to discover if The Notebook can be identified as a romance even if it never was Sparks’ intention. The only aspect that differs between the genres is how the ending is written, other than that there are no remarkable differences. There are also several elements that validates that The Notebook has romantic features. Both of the protagonists have romance characteristics, the cover of the novel is a characteristic romance cover, and the storyline itself is based on a romance structure and it follows all of the essential romance elements. The conclusion of this paper is that The Notebook has romance elements and therefore can be placed in the romance genre even if that never was Sparks’ intention.