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Read The Choice? It's Your Decision.
Date of Review: Oct 22, 2007
The Bottom Line: Next time I pick up a book by someone named Nicholas, I need to make certain his last name's "Evans"; not "Sparks."
"Stories are as unique as the people who tell them, and the best stories are those in which the ending is a surprise."
There's an aphorism most of us probably heard from a co-worker upon finding us sweating over our first-ever presentation in front of our peers. A pretty basic outline for a classic speech, it goes something like this: "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, and then tell 'em what you told 'em." It's rather simplistic, although I still see plenty of my co-workers following the same pattern. If his latest novel is any indication, multi-bestselling author Nicholas Sparks¹ follows that particular plan, too.
Want some clues? Well, the title of his book is a dead giveaway: calling it The Choice certainly reveals that the book's all about making some sort of major decision. And the very first sentence of the book (that one up top - "Stories are as unique as...") is a sure-fire clue that there's going to be a big surprise somewhere in the last reel. So Sparks has already "told 'em what he's gonna tell 'em" up front - all that leaves him is the "tell 'em" part...
It was certainly not your classic "meet cute"; no, it wasn't particularly cute at all: after their first encounter, Gabby Holland and Travis Parker seemed destined to be the kind of neighbors who just nod and grunt as they step out on their respective porches for the morning paper. That would have been a shame, of course, since the two were so obviously meant for one another. Fate has a way of making these things work out, to be sure - at least in fiction (or at least in the sort of fiction that Nicholas Sparks writes).
The question, of course, is whether those potential soul mates ever found the chance to act on that inimitable attraction (which, of course, both of them sensed down to the very marrow of their bones the first time their eyes met) - there were other complications besides the messiness of first impressions. Travis could charitably be described as commitment-phobic (a description that seems to fit most mid-thirties bachelors in the "Cosmopolitan" world). Gabby was pretty much in the antithetical situation - committed... but to a commitment-phobe of her own.
Ahhh... so is that the titular "choice"? to dump the comfy boyfriend for the hunky, though potentially dangerous, neighbor? Or is that just the lead-up to The Choice? I ain't tellin'...
Nicholas Sparks has apparently made a career of writing about touchy-feely sensitive new-age males, guys like his main character, Travis Parker (a dozen times or so, in fact). Oh, don't get me wrong: Travis is no namby-pamby metrosexual. He's all man, our Mr. Parker - a mountain-bikin', parasailin', boogie-boardin' North Carolina sufer dude with a deep tan and a free-range dog; an extreme sports kind of guy before anyone ever heard of extreme sports. He's all that, even if he is a wonderful listener and great with his friends' kids. Oh, and he just happens to be desperate for that white picket fence that goes along with the wife and the 2.3 kids, even if he doesn't know it yet.
So what's this choice stuff? Ain't tellin'... other than to mention that, while the choosing business seems to be taking place in the present, all of that first -meeting, -touch, -kiss, -grope action took place more than a decade ago. But what the heck is the choice, and who's making it? again: ain't tellin'...
What I am tellin' you, though, is that The Choice is actually about as close as you can get to a bodice-ripper and still have a picture of a collie on the dust jacket instead of a buffed and bare-chested stud-muffin. Sparks' descriptions of the couple's first (maybe last? ain't tellin'...) weekend together is darned near pure Harlequin. No "throbbing loins," perhaps, and not a single "oh! my darling" in sight, but with all the "electricity at [his/her] touch" and the "heat of [his/her] body" going on, the verbiage - and more to the point, the plot - is nonetheless straight out of something by Barbara Cartland.
So Nicholas Sparks dressed up a second-rate romance novel simply by adding another layer to pass it off as some sort of moral-ethical dilemma; that titular "choice" business. But with more than seventy per cent of the novel devoted to back story for the eventual choice, it's difficult to think of the novel as anything but a romance; the breast-beating and head-scratching parts seem to come almost as an afterthought. That's not to mention that whoever it is making whatever choice it is really doesn't seem to give it much thought... And that's where The Choice goes south. A fairly pedestrian romance swaddled in a not-particularly well-plotted moral dilemma, The Choice seems to me to be solid evidence that the outline for a speech ("tell 'em what...") doesn't work for novels. The book still might make nice, light beach reading, though - the problem being that beach season is over.
Oh, and the surprise? Not so big a surprise after all...
¹ in the interest of full disclosure, I ought to mention that in choosing thie book I confused "Sparks" with "Evans." Duh.
