This perspective sometimes allows the readers into the mind of a character - typically Noah and Allie - but sometimes does not - such as Anne and Lon. But the narrator of the middle chapters provides a limited, third-person omniscient point of view. The narrator of The Notebook in the opening and closing chapters is Noah. Often the reader shares a flashback with a character that is not shared with any other character. Characters reveal these 'framed' stories through their shared and private memories. This framework technique provides the structure of the plot, and flashback is the technique Sparks uses to tell the stories. Each story is distinct within itself while simultaneously being an integral part of a greater whole every individual picture is a part of a bigger picture.

And some of these smaller stories of earlier events frame even smaller stories of other events. These stories, told within the context of the other storylines, fit within both the picture and the frame. Although the frame represents the present and current storyline and the picture represents the reunion, within these two main storylines are other stories, some are episodes and others are vignettes, which are told in the form of a flashback. The present-day storyline frames the reunion story. And the opening and closing chapters of the novel are set in the present, some 49 years later. If you imagine a picture in a frame, the reunion is the photograph. This particular event only lasts three days in 1946 however, important information that shapes their reunion occurred weeks and years earlier. The main storyline is the reunion of Noah and Allie and the conflict that they face as they must decide the path their lives will now take. Instead of starting at the beginning and telling the story in chronological order, Nicholas Sparks begins The Notebook near the end of what would be a linear narration and then employs both the framing technique and flashback to tell his tale.

Sparks the notebook