The Notebook is a story-within-a-story: we first meet a nameless elderly man reading a story from a notebook to an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s. The notebook tells the story of Allie and Noah, who meet in Noah’s hometown while Allie and her family are vacationing there. Their whirlwind romance is cut short by her return home, and though Noah writes her a letter every day for a year, none of them are answered. Fourteen years later, Noah returns from World War II and is reunited with Allie, who is now engaged to Lon. As the novel progresses, Allie is revealed as the elderly woman of the framing story—but the elderly man’s identity remains a mystery: the reader doesn’t know if Allie stayed with Lon or returned to Noah. The romance struck a chord with readers and viewers alike; the novel made the bestseller list the first week of its release, and was later made into a popular film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.