What is the importance of Urbain's notebooks in the novel, War and Turpentine?

Notebooks are a means of transporting memory through time, as Urbain preserves his life in his diaries, leaving it as a legacy to his grandson. The narrator finds it difficult to initiate the project of reading and transcribing the notebooks, as for him, it is a fear of disassociating from memory and authenticating Urbain's memories separate from his own.