"You have to promise not to fall in love with me." Jamie Sullivan, a religious and very self-aware teenager, says this to Landon Carter, a popular and unknowing teenager, after he asks her to the homecoming dance. And with that, we know that fall in love with her is exactly what Landon is going to do.
A Walk to Remember was Sparks' third novel, but my second to read/review because I'm going in order of the film adaptations. Whereas Message in a Bottle was about mid-adult love, A Walk to Remember is about young high school love. The aforementioned Jamie and Landon have known each other their whole lives going to school together in Beaufort, NC. However, Landon is more "worldly" and popular while Jamie is religious and everyone makes fun of her (the only way this makes sense to me is because the characters are in high school, but even still I think it's a stretch). When Landon ends up having to star in the local Christmas play opposite Jamie, he begins to see her differently than just the girl that wears brown cardigans and her hair in a bun every day. They fall in love against the odds of differing life views and truly terrible high school friends. However, Jamie is dying of leukemia and Landon, faced with losing the one person he's ever loved, doesn't know what to do. Eventually he decides to help her fulfill the one dream she's ever had. And then...the book is ambiguous if/when Jamie dies but it's implied.
Sparks again uses a framing device to start and end the story. Landon tells the story in first person, looking back on the events of forty years ago when Jamie changed his life. The "voice" Sparks adopts in the writing for Landon can be annoying, as he kept saying "if you know what I mean" about all sorts of things. The setting is also 1959, which.....ok, I guess? There isn't really a need for this, and at times I felt like Sparks forgot the setting he had set his own book in; he referenced Landon driving all the time and calling people on the phone. I know those things existed in 1959 but I don't think they were as prevalent as they seem to be in Landon's life.
Landon at first only really notices Jamie when she's in the role of the "angel" in the play - her hair is down instead of in a bun and she's wearing make up and beautiful dress. He makes note of her looks ALL. THE. TIME. As if she's not worthy of being loved because she's "plain" and wears a bun. Seriously, the bun and her hair being worn down are mentioned a lot. I'm harping on this a lot, I know, and I give Sparks some serious flak for being obsessed with how his female characters look when I do the same thing with men. What can I say, I'm complicated and it's a complicated issue and we're all full of multitudes of contradictions (shrug emoji).
Anyway, the story is short and broad, and uses Jamie less as a character and more as a device for everyone else to realize how they can be better. Forgiveness is a big theme. Recognizing that people are more than what we assume they to be. And that when you learn someone is dying, start being nice to them. Or maybe you should always be nice to people...because we're all basically dying? I don't know, just be nice to people that aren't like you.
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