Nicholas Sparks leans toward shameless sentimentality in all of his novels, so it’s no surprise “The Notebook” indulges on emotion.

The novel, which inspired the summer film, opens in a nursing home as 80-year-old Noah Calhoun reads a love-story from a notebook. Set amid the austere beauty of coastal Carolina in 1946, a 31-year-old Noah has just returned from World War 2 and is trying to forget a past summer romance with the lovely Allie Nelson.

Near marriage, Allie is compelled to track down Noah despite being from a higher social class than Noah. But one steamed-crab dinner and a canoe ride later, they fall madly in love again. Readers learn, as the book returns to the present, that Noah is reading the notebook to Allie, hoping she, being severely struck by Alzheimer’s disease, can remember the past.

There is something odd about a novel chronicling a romance that reaches its zenith as one partner is suffering from a mental disease. However, this is satisfactory within the confines of romantic philosophy: Love conquers all, even when Alzheimer’s leaves the doctors – and this reviewer – befuddled.