Yesterday, I finally figured it out. I could say that they are poorly written, ill-conceived, riddled with tropes and clichés, predictable, purely escapist, and not interesting and I would be right. But that is not it.
Sparks' novels - which he hilariously and delusionally believes are incapable of being placed in a genre category - are flat, sensationalized stories of what love would be if love had nothing to do with real people, real pain, and God. They take us to a place that exists only in the daydreams of lonely, frightened teenagers who have known nothing better than the white-people-nearly-kissing "love" that Sparks has to offer because they have yet to experience love at its richest and deepest and best.
Every time I see the movie trailer for Safe Haven, I roll my eyes. Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel flit across my TV screen, meeting and staring and barely controlling themselves and running and kissing and wailing and on and on and on in a spectacular show of what Nicholas Sparks thinks love is.
The idea that a single woman and a single man in close proximity to each other must fall in love, because that is what is done. The idea that every woman is looking to be "saved" from a lonely life of spinsterhood and protected from her father, an ex-boyfriend, the world. The idea that every man needs a six pack and a Georgia tan to go along with the woman he can't take his eyes off of, not even for a second to, like, go to the bathroom or drive to work or go to the gym to keep those abs looking fine for his lady.
The idea that the tragedies of life (the BIG ones - death, cancer, war - all used for the furtherance of this one couple's glorious, wholesome relationship) will bring them together in a way that no one who sees them could ever forget. Nothing can ever compare with their love. It is the pinnacle of everything, the masterpiece to our horror show. The Romeo & Juliet to our Bonnie & Clyde.
I see that and I can't help but think that there has to be something better. There has to be something more.
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