Nicholas Sparks on why he makes us cry and the power of love
Nicholas Sparks knows his reputation. He’s the make-you-cry guy. The man who’s written so many tearjerker scenes in novels such as “The Notebook,” “A Walk to Remember” and “The Best of Me” that his publisher may as well print the pages on Kleenex.
And if his newest book, “Every Breath,” released in October, is any indication, he has no plans to mess with a blue-ribbon recipe.
It begs the question: Why does he want to hurt us?
He doesn’t, obviously. But he does want us to feel something real. And that, he says, is impossible to do without at least a little bit of pain.
“One of the things that I strive to do in the creation and completion of any novel is to craft a story that feels memorable to the readers. And part of what makes something memorable, at least to my mind, is a story in which the reader feels as though they’ve lived a full life between the covers,” Sparks says. “They’ve gone through all the emotions of life. They’ve been curious. They’ve been confused. They’ve felt infatuation give way to interest. They’ve found themselves fall in love. They’ve been angry. They’ve been frustrated. And, of course, there are moments of sorrow.”
Were he to ignore one of these key emotions, he says, the story would not feel as real. And then, what’s the point?
One of the staples of a Sparks novel is the decadesspanning timeline. In “The Notebook” — his first and most famous book — Allie and Noah fall in love as teenagers before separating, only to rekindle their love as adults and eventually spend decades together. And though the initial love story is charming and cinematic, it’s the sweeping timeline that propelled the book and its movie to its status as a mainstream classic.
Sparks has relied on that long timeline in many of his novels, including “The Best of Me.” And here, in “Every Breath,” Sparks heads back to that formula, where life’s circumstances separate lovers for decades.
It’s no accident. Love stories, Sparks says, need time to unfold in their entirety.
“It’s been a guiding principle of mine ever since I’ve written: the simple idea that all great love stories must, by definition, end in tragedy,” he says.
“The nature of life is that it ends. And after that, what’s left in the wake is sorrow. And the greater the love, the more sorrow there is,” Sparks continues. “So, sadly, love and sorrow — or love and tragedy — are opposite sides of the same coin.”
Readers have responded well to this notion. In a little more than two decades, Sparks has sold more than 100 million copies of his 20 novels, 11 of which have been turned into major motion pictures that have grossed close to $1 billion.
Critics have been less doting, labeling his stories as formulaic sick-lit and granting his films an average critics score of 24 percent “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes.
But Sparks says this idea of love and tragedy operating as twins is deeply personal.
“I’m trying to genuinely evoke the full realm of human emotion without being manipulative or melodramatic,” he says.
He was 23 when his mother died unexpectedly in an equestrian accident. Twentynine when he lost his father. And only in his early 30s when his younger sister died of a brain tumor.
“Each of those events was truly — at the time — the saddest thing that had ever happened to me. And yet, in the aftermath, with the passage of time and feeling, I’ve been able to smile again,” he says.
He says he strives to give readers that perspective. That’s why he based Jamie of “A Walk to Remember” on his younger sister. And why he wove the thread of his mother’s donated heart into the fabric of “The Best of Me.”
“I try to end virtually all of my novels with a sense of hope or aspiration,” Sparks says. “To me, that’s important because I don’t want to write a downer book, which is, frankly, easier to do than to end with hope or aspiration.”
So here, in “Every Breath,” is another installment of what has become Sparks’ trademark style: Two people from far different backgrounds and circumstances are brought together by fate, for a whirlwind weekend during which they never expected to fall in love. There are love letters, à la “Message in a Bottle,” though the ones featured here spring from a mailbox on a North Carolina beach, where writers stuff the box with missives in which they wax romantic about all the things they’ve loved and lost in life.
The entire premise of the mailbox is so romantic, it seems like it could come only from the imagination of Nicholas Sparks. But no. It’s real. And by the end of the book — maybe even the middle — you’ll want to go to that mailbox, called “Kindred Spirit,” to read others’ stories. It’s already surged in popularity in the short time since the book launched, said Sparks, who happens to know a friend of the mailbox’s caretaker.
“The caretaker used to have to go once a week or once every two weeks to check on it. But it’s three times a day right now,” Sparks says. “She used to walk. But the caretaker usually just had to buy a sand bicycle because she’s going down there so frequently.”
That’s as good a hint as any that this book is a perfect fit in Sparks’s bibliography, and fans who loved his other books will feel right at home on yet another North Carolina beach.
Even if it means shedding a few tears along the way.