I read this this week and found myself wanting things to go differently which I never usually do with Spark's books. I wasn't completly happy with the two lead characters as I found them all too fictionalised. While in traction in the hospital, her sister comes and tells her that there's a co-soldier of BiL with him over in Iraq who doesn't have anyone to write to him. So under the cover of anonymity, Jenny starts writing to Capt. John B... only she sets rules. He can't know her name/location, he can't know anything about her real life... she's going to write as if they have been lovers/partners for years, and it's going to be total fantasy. Letters from a kinky wife he doesn't have. Which naturally gets him ALL shades of hot and bothered, and like Jenny doesn't know that he's going to want to MEET her when he comes home? When “any other business” was called for at the crowded meeting, Feeley stood up and asked: “What does the INTO propose to do in the John McGahern case?” Total silence followed. The chair of the meeting responded by asking: “The John McGahern case? What case is that? I never heard of it.” Feeley, naively, told the story of the fate which had recently befallen McGahern, before the chair “spread out his hands with the palms upwards and, with his eyes on the ceiling, said, ‘It’s all news to me.’” Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love—and face the hardest decision of his life. ( From the publisher.)

I fell in love with John's character and surprisingly his father too. Each is well written and they felt like real people. I also enjoyed reading about John's military career and the reasons that take men into a war. Savannah as the heroine was a little too perfect for me but their heartbreaking love story and the regret that they both share will keep you up into the wee hours, and leave you wondering about John long after you've finished reading its bittersweet ending. There are beautiful passages of both looking up at the night sky when the Full Moon is shining. Each knowing that the other is also gazing at the same Moon. The most obvious – and relevant – reason that two people who love each other can’t be together is that one or both is already married, and they are loathe to divorce their spouse for family reasons. This was the “obstacle” that kept the lovers apart in both The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller and The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Tom Murphy wrote to McGahern in the wake of the play’s panning by critics in 1991, incredulous at the reception, slamming the “famine mentalities” of those who dismissed it. The poet Robert Greacen further added, in a letter to McGahern: “I think every society is unwilling to face its problems/prejudices/intolerances. Ibsen found that out in his native Norway.” One wonders how a new production of the play might fare today in a very different Ireland from the one that first saw it.John is a bit of a rebel but never fell too far off the right path. He was raised by his father, though the two weren't all that close. John had a hard time relating to his father. His father's coin collecting hobby kept them close for a short while. Over time, the two grew further apart. After high school, John realized he wasn't going anywhere in life so he enlisted with the Army for a 4-year tour. Neither John or Savannah were expecting to fall in love but their attraction was inevitable. His two-week furlough is up and he has to return to Germany. Savannah promises to wait for John to finish out his tour. The two continue their relationship through handwritten letters. Savannah writes first.

I was able to feel the magnitude of the pain John felt when he saw Savannah for the first time wearing a wedding ring. The description in the novel is extremely vivid and eloquent. The situations in which the two are placed are realistic and allowed me to picture the settings easily.

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Anyway, can I give you this bit of advice? Next time, choose more wisely and if you don't, keep it to yourself. I don't think I can take anymore of your angst. After college, Sparks sought work with publishers or to attend law school, but was rejected in both attempts. He then spent the next three years trying other careers, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone and starting his own manufacturing business. To take care of each other should be our primary concern in this twenty-first century, and Father John Dear is steady on this course.” John Dear’s extraordinary autobiography, A Persistent Peace, reaches its climactic scene when a National Guard unit, prior to going to Iraq, stands in the early morning outside the door of his parish in New Mexico, where he has been preaching against the war, chanting ‘One bullet, one kill!’ His life might well be summed up by that scene: a priest whose commitment to nonviolence and peace carries him to El Salvador, the Middle East and all over the United States, and whose protests land him in jail again and again. His deep faith and steadfast devotion to the principles of Jesus, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan, lead him to defy the authority of hierarchies, whether in his church or in the nation, and hold fast to his beliefs even when soldiers, chanting threats, show up at his door. John Dear’s life story is inspiring and heartwarming.”

One afternoon, John goes looking for her and finds her at the pier, crying her eyes out. Basically, she was sad about him returning to Germany and leaving her. But she also gives him a book and states her belief that his father had asperger's. He didn't take it too well, and stormed off, and ended up getting into a fight with Randy, but punched Tim, Savannah's best friend in the whole wide world, in the nose. John Dear has been arrested in the cause of peace and human decency more times than anyone else I know. I am honored to consider him a friend.”

Nicholas Sparks

As fate must intervene in a story such as this, despite desperately wanting to be together, John continues to re-enlist for another term with the army. September 11 changed his perspective of the world, and felt it his obligation to do so. Savannah, as is understandable, finds it harder to wait for him, with no end date in sight. Professor Carruthers highlights the expectations placed on women to do the emotional labour of sustaining intimacy across miles and years of absence, and challenges the allocation of blame when some of those relationships broke down.