The Longest Ride

Title: The Longest Ride
By: Nicholas Sparks

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Rating:

I'm writing about a Nicholas Sparks book so it goes without saying that I have to mention how formulaic a lot of his books are. Boy meets girl. Girl and boy fall in love. In the end someone dies. You can usually count on Sparks to give you a death that has some deeper spiritual meaning but also somehow solves a problem in the novel - the romance novel version of a deus ex machina, if you will. These are all things to look forward to in The Longest Ride.

This is maybe the fourth novel I've read of Sparks' previous novels. I have The Last Song, Safe Haven, The Choice, and Dear John under my belt. Most of these I read because I knew my friends and I would end up watching the movie and I have a general rule about reading the books to movie adaptations before watching the film. I enjoyed most of the books except The Choice which IMDB says with come out in theaters in 2016.

I have to say as far as Sparks' books go (at least as far as the ones I've read), The Longest Ride is one of the best. The novel follows two storylines. The first belongs to Ira and his wife Ruth. In the beginning of the novel, Ira, a ninety year old man drives his car off the road. After finding himself stuck with no hopes of escaping the vehicle, his wife Ruth (who has passed away years before) keeps him company and encourages him to survive while Ira and the reader wait for help to arrive. Ira states and thinks that he is hallucinating his visions of Ruth and that his dead wife is really his subconscious trying to keep him alive but Sparks does a good job of creating some spiritual ambiguity there. Ruth distracts Ira while he waits for help by having him recount their lives together. Through Ira's retelling we see the couple's entire lives together. We see how they met, how they fell in love, the difficulties they had staying together when the world and a war (WWII) tried to tear them apart. We see how marriage and growing old affect their relationship.

Theirs is a truly touching story to read. As Sparks himself says, they are:

a wonderful example of enduring love.

The second storyline follows Luke and Sophia. Sophia is a senior in college trying to figure out what to do with her life after graduation. Luke is a bull rider risking his life in order to keep his mother's farm from foreclosure. Theirs is a modern love story. It shows Sophia's sorority house home and how she hates the cliques and gossip she's subjected to while living there. It shows the aggressive, preppy, rich, white ex-boyfriend and his superiority complex. We get scenes of Luke's life on his ranch where he and his mother work hard every day in the hopes of making ends meet. Ultimately, they fall in love and Luke must choose between getting the girl or continuing to ride to save his mother's ranch.

I have to say that to me, Ira and Ruth are the true gems of the novel. They're what make the book great for me. They feel genuine and more complex as characters to me than Luke and Sophia (maybe because the conflict in the younger couple's storyline was stretched out too long for it to not be overly dramatic). Granted, there was a lot more to see of Ruth and Ira as they spent a majority of their live together, whereas Luke and Sophia had only months to their storyline. But still, there's something commercial about the way Sophia and Luke read off the page. Luke's problem - to ride or not to ride - while understandable at first, becomes exasperating and redundant when EVERYONE is telling him not to. And while I understand that guilt is a very strong motivator, something about the way that story arc flowed bothered me. I feel like this awkwardness in the Sophia and Luke storyline really points back to the formulaic essence of Sparks' writing. He even states on his website:

...because Ira and his wife, Ruth, were such a wonderful example of enduring love, I wanted to find a perfect counterpoint as an example of new love. And that’s how I came up with Luke and Sophia. Sophia was created to resonate with my college-aged fans, and Luke is really the quintessential All-American guy.

Ira and Ruth read as a moment of inspiration for Sparks - full bodied and bursting with life, while Luke and Sophia seem to fit some reader demographic. I'm NOT saying that the characters weren't well written but their motivations were sometimes lacking and the intensity of their story paled in comparison to that of the older couple.

In terms of writing style, I have to say, Sparks has some neat tricks up his sleeve. I like the way he uses Ira's visions of Ruth in the car as a device to move their storyline along. He uses the device flawlessly and it reads smoothly. I also appreciated the way he separated his chapters. Often, I would be dragged through some emotional rollercoaster belonging to one couple only to be flung into the storyline of another. It kept me reading and turning pages. It kept me in invested in his characters, if a little frustrated that I had to wait to find out what happened next (which is also a great thing for a writer to do - leave them wanting more). I also have to admit that I had to physically stop myself from crying and sobbing on the train (where I usually do most of my reading) because of one of Ira's letters to Ruth. Something about that relationship struck me deeply and I have to applaud Sparks for being able to create this connection.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes romance novels or is thinking of reading the book before watching the movie adaptation which is now out in DVD. For those of you eyeing this movie, here's the trailer.

Let me know what you thought of the book or if you liked any of the MANY changes that were made for the movie adaptation.