"The Choice of Sophie" is a literary masterpiece, an astonishing portrayal of lyrical and powerful writing, combined with an equally astonishing presentation of a deep and empathetic understanding of the human heart, upon which the existence and the essence of the soul are based.

It is truly a wonderful, irresistibly thrilling book, one of those that you never forget, one that you love each page separately.

How Styron managed to weave all these threads into the fabric of universal oblivion within the mind of world history that continues to be written with blood and tears is an absolute wonder.

If it was written based on the Holocaust, the Nazi concentration camps, and the inheritances of death and the absurdity of inferiority that humanity acquired after millions of dead and living bodies, the penetration of his pen continues to ever deeper and more unfathomable depths.

Where man meets himself, trembles, and flees to depression to save the tiniest, insignificant amount of humanity and consciousness, sickening his soul with the deadly images of a terrifying reality in which he participated, even as a spectator.

You reach the end where your only hope refers you to God, to a God who died, to a God who never existed, but you seek him with despair and paranoia.

You seek him and accuse him of all the martyrdoms of nature, of all the nightmares that woke up through the poetry of fallacies and essential violations against life.

You condemn and hate with passion the creator of creation when in the holy and barren deserts of the camps, submissive and vengeful societies are created. When in the concentration criminal camp of every authority, you realize that the ultimate goal is not annihilation.

The smell of death that you are forced to inhale is not the essence of the authoritarian work.

These simply push you with absolute precision towards the connection between self-suppression and self-preservation.

Thus, you stop seeking God, you belong to collective societies of inferiority and coercion with the basic characteristic of absolute indifference to everything.

If at some point you kneel in the memory of God and are shocked by the memories of alienation that adorn your world, then when you feel the absence of divine help, but you seek human intervention, then you go crazy.

The question in front of the gravestones of the cemetery, in all historical periods, changes substance, changes subject, object, and predicate, and becomes shockingly understandable.

We no longer ask where God was in front of the sick hell of universal tragedy, but where was man, men... to prevent, to save, to help.

There is no answer, and whoever found it preferred to forget before committing suicide.

Thus, Styron walks within his history, with sick themes and appeals to human consciousness. He reveals, excludes, parallels, records, and tells, with references and elements of the most intense emotions, situations, events, and actions of the race of beings with a mind and a soul.

There is no difference between the black slaves of the rural South of America and the victims of the Nazis. The race and the faith, the inheritance of slavery and racism, the North and the South, the Jews and the fascists, the ethical bitterness and the sexual liberation, the challenge for life and the religious beliefs. Love and the schizophrenia of logic, traumas, experiences, feelings, nausea, choice, triumph, paranoia.

Equivalent magnitudes of evil in every country, in every corner of physical law.

In reality, the author transmits a story shaped into characters.

Virtually, he builds all the sick perfections that end in every ancient Greek tragedy where the past hangs threateningly over the narrative.

The protagonists of the book are naked both inside and outside, they live, exist, walk, love, create unforgettable stories.

They are imprisoned, doubly wonderful victims on the altar of the guilt of the survivors.

Crushed and winners in a lost battle, they insist on fully sailing in their own pompous, autarchic desire. In their own choice... These are real people who live openly under the shadow of oblivion and their limitations.

They tell their stories, they live them as protagonists, and the power of this book lies in the fact that through these stories, the story of each of us is also told.

A densely written novel, with a deep research work on the degradation of human life.

A dialogue about the central evil of the century that passed through three characters. Through three characters, infinite stories are born in different spacetime points.

Memories and images are woven together with the common denominator of fear, hatred, dependence, and the acceptance of the philosophy of "Final Solutions".

The violation of human life, the choices that wrap you like the frozen clothes of the redemptive wild lie, the victory of fascism in every manifestation, painfully shows how the consequences of every holocaust that humanity committed and allowed always prevail. Both on a collective and on a personal level.

The Choice of Sophie!

How much more heartbreaking and painful could this "choice" be, how much more incomprehensible and nightmarish, truly the human mind cannot bear it.

It is this choice that is not given to everyone, that only happens to you if you belong to the cursed ones, to the fighters of the incomprehensible, to the existence of pure evil, to those who were taught darkness, frivolity, and the power of the human soul.

If you make the "choice", inevitably the delusion of the condemned hope and paranoia triumph. What is certain is that if you are in front of this choice, you willingly sink into a dark oblivion, and you don't know if you lost yourself within yourself or if you passed into the arms of death. Besides, you are in non-existence, no matter how much you shout, no one will hear you, and if you are heard, it is in vain, the "choice" has been made. Somehow, thus comes the dizziness and one damned thing after another.

I am not in a position to classify this masterpiece into any category.

Its greatness reveals its mysteries gradually as if one surface is flushed out under another.

The hint of fear and the damned love is revealed from the beginning, but the intensity, the development, and the revelations heat up and deepen as the reader gets to know the people better.

It is a novel of life that balances at a moment imprisoned by the traumas of the past and divided by the uncertainty of the future. A multiple perspective in an ethical prism that separates all kinds of themes of life.

A "choice" after which you are not afraid. The only way to cash in on the most terrible choice of your life is to follow whoever promises you nothing but death.

* If you have reached this point reading my review, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If you were scared by the sheet I posted and simply took a look, I still thank you.

If you didn't read it at all, I love you. And I promise you to be as short as possible in the written expression and analysis of my reading "choices".

P.S. When it comes to the love affair that books inspire in me, I almost never keep my promises.

Lituji jen jedné věci, a to toho, že jsem si Sophiinu volbu nepřečetla už dřív a nesmyslně to odkládala. Bylo to opravdu silné čtení.

Když jsem konečně začala číst, bylo mi jasné, že jsem tímto přehlédla něco opravdu důležitého.

Sophiina volba obsahovala mnoho zajímavých myšlenek a názorů, které mě natolik zaujal, že jsem se nemohla od ní odvrátit.

Byla to tak bohatá a komplexní kniha, že jsem si jistá, že ji budu ještě několikrát přečíst, aby jsem mohl všechny její detaily pochopit.

Tento čtení mě určitě změnilo a já doufám, že budou mít další čtenáře také stejný zážitek.

William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" is truly a remarkable work that stands as one of the great American novels of the 20th century.

Based loosely on his own experiences in the late 1940s in New York, Styron weaves a captivating tale. He creates a character named Stingo, a writer who moves into a boarding house in Brooklyn. There, he encounters a Polish emigré, Sophie, and her unpredictable lover, Nathan. With great finesse and restraint, Styron delicately traces the evolution of the complex friendship and love that binds these three individuals, leading to stunning consequences.

For those who have only witnessed the 1985 movie starring Meryl Streep (and she rightfully won the Best Actress Oscar for it), it is highly recommended to read the book. While the movie was wonderful, the book offers a much deeper and more detailed exploration. Styron's mastery of this compelling narrative is truly a sight to behold.

Styron has an incredible talent for infusing humor into dark situations. He portrays Stingo as an overly horny, frustrated, yet wise-cracking man in his early 20s. Stingo comes to life on the pages, fully formed and completely human. Nathan, too, in a very different way, is a three-dimensional and passionate character. Sophie is depicted in more delicate tones compared to the two men, which makes the final chapters of the book even more powerful. We witness the hardships she has endured and the sacrifices she has made, and it is undeniably heartbreaking.

The book's ending is both inevitable and perfect, a result of all that has preceded it. Styron has taken a complex array of subjects - young manhood, post-WWII New York, mental illness, obsession, guilt, and more - and structured them into a novel that is impossible to put down.

The term “Sophie’s Choice,” originating from a crucial plot element in William Styron’s eponymous novel, has emerged as a prominent American idiom. It has infiltrated our daily lives, been the subject of a well-received movie starring Meryl Streep, and even made an appearance in “The Simpsons.”

Despite its cultural ubiquity, I won’t assume you know the details of the choice. However, understanding those particulars won’t impact your enjoyment of the novel. I’ve known the twist for years but mistakenly thought it was the essence of “Sophie’s Choice.”

It isn’t. “Sophie’s Choice” is an overwhelming work. It’s ambitious, unfocused, irritating, ostentatious, precisely detailed, overly-written, soaring, gutter-dwelling, psychologically acute, digressionary, complex, narcissistic, and yet, an absolute masterpiece.

This book is a sprawling mess of the best kind. Styron’s talents seem to have spilled onto the page and spread in all directions. It made me laugh, cringe, and even feel embarrassed for Styron or the editor at times. It’s a classic that you must grapple with.

The story is set in post-war New York City in 1947 and is narrated by Stingo, a young southerner. Stingo, a thinly veiled version of Styron himself, comes north to pursue his writing dreams. He meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish man, and Sophie, a Polish woman who survived Auschwitz.

Stingo is both attracted to and repelled by the couple. The plot gradually reveals their many secrets. The book meanders, frustrating and breathtaking in equal measure. For example, Stingo spends time describing his publishing job and includes “excerpts” from his work. Towards the end, there’s a curious interlude about his courtship with Mary-Alice.

Your response to “Sophie’s Choice” depends on your tolerance of Stingo. He’s a navel gazer, and there are two tragedies at play: the Holocaust symbolized by Sophie and Nathan, and Stingo’s virginity.

Styron is a verbose storyteller, using five words when one would do and preferring obscure words. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” is his most controversial novel, but I can’t imagine it topping “Sophie’s Choice” in audacity.

The novel mixes fictional and real-life elements, and the friction can be jarring. There are incredible set pieces within Auschwitz and a marathon sex scene.

This review is conflicted because I was conflicted while reading. My forbearance towards Styron ebbed and flowed. But when I put the book down, it lingered, making the next book seem pallid in comparison. “Sophie’s Choice” is a resonant, mad, and powerful book that I want to read again for the first time.

This really wasn't what I expected.

It felt like a novel with two distinct parts.

The first part is the tale of the titular Sophie, a survivor of the WW2 concentration camp. It deals with her recovery post-war, her troubled relationship with the mentally ill Nathan, and the horrifying story of her life in the concentration camp, including her "choice".

These aspects of the novel were very good. It was easy to feel a deep empathy for her, and sympathize even when she made disastrous choices.

The other part of the novel focuses on the narrator who lives in the same building as Sophie and Nathan. However, he spends far too much time discussing his sex life and lack thereof.

I would go as far as to say that Stingo was a huge detriment to this novel, and I quickly found myself skimming those parts.

I think this would have been a much better novel at half the length.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to checking out the movie adaptation.

There is a great deal happening within the pages of this book.

First and foremost, there is the story of Sophie, a captivating Polish woman who bears the deep scars of her past. The Holocaust and her time as a prisoner at Auschwitz forced her to make an incredibly heart-wrenching choice.

Then there is her present-day life, filled with a turbulent love affair with a man who is often violent and drug-addicted. The many complexities of this abusive relationship are laid bare.

There is also a hint of the irony of segregation and racism in post-WWII America.

In the midst of it all is an aspiring author named Stingo, who reveals each of these stories through his eyes and ears, all while trying really hard to get laid.

I was somewhat surprised by the amount of semi-erotica in this book. While I understood its purpose, it felt slightly out of place in a book about the Holocaust. The author seemed overly obsessed with the F word. For someone usually so eloquent and vivid in descriptions, it was strange that he could find no other word to describe the sex scenes. It popped up what felt like a hundred times, when half a dozen would have been more than enough.

Anyway, the real story is, of course, Sophie. Her family history, how she ended up in a concentration camp despite not being Jewish, the almost unfathomable decision she was forced to make there, and how this secret changed her. The pain she feels is palpable, especially in one particular scene, and it is hard for the reader to bear.

If you have seen the movie, you know what Sophie's choice is. If not, I won't reveal it as it is not disclosed until the end of the book. Suffice it to say that the emotions stirred by its telling are just as intense and heart-wrenching as in the film.

This book is filled with volatile, raw emotion and can be difficult to get through at times. However, despite its length and flaws, I found that the compassion and humanity felt throughout made it a worthwhile and very moving read.

Έπος πολλαπλών αναγνώσεων

The choice of Sophie is an ode to the passionate love, the love without limits, rules and conditions. The one that makes you forget, endure, humble yourself to live his desire, a very hard drug.

The graffiti of Styron, the theater of human irrationality, the American north-south racism, in direct contrast to the Nazi atrocities.

However, the readers have a role and a say in all this. The simplicity in characters is impressive, giving the reader the ability to understand the situation from different optical angles and it becomes clear that whoever prefers neutrality quickly becomes prey to the storm.

The story repeats itself and very soon we will become the others.

The landscape and the living figures of that summer, as in some umber-smeared snapshot found in the brittle black pages of an old album, had become more dusty and indistinct as time for me unspooled with negligent haste into my own middle age. Yet, that summer's agony still cried out for explanation. This novel combines humor, Brooklyn, mental illness, eroticism, and the Holocaust in an unlikely yet captivating concoction. It was a story I initially knew only as a popular film starring Meryl Streep, involving some troubling 'choice'. What I discovered was a deeply moving, brilliantly written, though sometimes overblown, tale of three people whose lives converge in the summer of 1947.

Stingo, a twenty-two-year-old aspiring writer dismissed from McGraw-Hill, is the narrator. His perspective initially puzzled and intrigued me. As he moves into The Pink Palace in a Jewish neighborhood, he becomes caught up in the sexually charged atmosphere with his fellow boarders, Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowski. I loved the moments spent with this trio, filled with unrequited love, a passionate affair, genuine friendship, and compelling dialogue. Sophie gradually reveals her past, including her time in Auschwitz, but not all at once. The plot alternates between the present and flashbacks, which, while important, I found less compelling at times.

By the end, I felt slightly manipulated by the author, similar to my experience with A Little Life. I also wasn't a fan of the author's voice coming through Stingo. However, despite these flaws, this novel is exceptional and unforgettable. It makes me reflect on the nature of humankind and the ordinariness of both the perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust. Sophie is a complex character, not painted as a noble innocent, yet we are drawn to her and can empathize with her pain and joy. Overall, it's a book I would highly recommend, even if it didn't quite reach the five-star level I initially expected.

Confessional monologues serve as counter narratives, adding depth and complexity to the story.

Flashbacks transport the reader from an American boarding house to the horrors of Auschwitz, creating a stark contrast and heightening the emotional impact.

An intriguing love triangle develops, filled with passion, jealousy, and longing.

Secrets and lies unfold with each new chapter, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat and eager to discover the truth.

The sex scenes are written with meticulousness, adding a touch of sensuality and realism to the narrative.

Styron's novel is intricately woven and stylistically stupendous, captivating the reader from beginning to end.

The madness is redefined through the characters' thoughts, delicately placed on the page and transformed into a powerful drama.

The trauma experienced by a Polish woman at Auschwitz, the ideological dilemmas of a Southerner-turned-New Yorker and writer, and the double life of an intellectual Northerner all contribute to the psychological depth of the novel.

It is a book about "1947, that cradle year of psychoanalysis in postwar America."

Even though many people have read or seen the movie adaptation, there is still much to say about this remarkable book.

Each character grows and develops throughout the story, despite the angst, stupidity, trauma, depression, anxiety, ideology, drunken stupor, and disdain for life, craft, and art.

The new developments, unfolding stories, and revealed secrets with each turn of the page are what make this book so engaging.

Even with the sad ending, there is something neurotic, melancholic, and strangely pleasing about this novel.

The gilded prose and festooned paragraphs, which may initially seem like a writer trying too hard, actually add to the beauty and elegance of the writing.

Now that I have finished reading the book, I am eager to see the movie and experience the story in a different medium.

How painful the book was.

And I really liked it. Although in the first month of the year, unexpected events happened to me and made me give up everything, but I couldn't stop reading this book. And the more I got to the end, the more bitter it became.

This book seemed to have a strange charm that pulled me in. Despite the difficulties and setbacks in my life, I found a kind of solace in reading it.

As I turned the pages, I could feel the emotions of the characters and was completely immersed in the story.

However, towards the end, the plot took an unexpected turn, which made my heart ache.

But still, I couldn't help but continue reading, eager to know the final outcome.

In the end, I finished the book with a heavy heart, but also with a sense of satisfaction.

It was a truly unforgettable reading experience.

This isn't a term I would have anticipated using to describe Styron's Sophie's Choice, that obligatory Masterpiece (TM), that grand National-Book-Award-winning outpouring of words. But there it is: Sophie's Choice is silly.

And it's a strange, solemn kind of silliness. It becomes impossible to overlook the ways it is afflicted by stylistic issues that have enormous ethical rather than just aesthetic implications. This is a book that contemplates, among countless other things, the comparing (and conflating) of great and small matters. At several junctures, as he relates the tale of Sophie's Holocaust experiences, our narrator Stingo remarks, looking back from after the war, how shockingly ordinary and insignificant his daily activities were while Sophie was深陷于1943年的世界肛门之中, as he contrasts these with her ordeal in what he terms the "conclusive, irrevocable horror" of the Absurd: "listening to Glenn Miller, guzzling beer, fooling around in bars, masturbating" at the very time that Sophie was at Auschwitz.

Seemingly celebrating that same transcendental Absurd, Styron's frenetically overcharged, garishly thesaural prose style functions well initially as a satirical device when it is centered solely on Stingo. In the opening chapters, when he is working as a junior editor at McGraw-Hill and presenting us with his reader's reports on a batch of hilariously unreadable manuscripts he has been submitted, this ceaseless gush of fancy polysyllables and elegant variations can be humorous in the same manner that much of Martin Amis's The Information is funny: as a delightfully nihilistic means for the pretentious skewering of pretentiousness. However, when the Reich's destruction of Sophie's family and the terrifying plight of the countless thousands in Auschwitz and Birkenau is depicted in the same style as Stingo's frustrated erotic pursuit to talk himself into the pants of hot "cockteases," it becomes disturbingly difficult to know where one is supposed to stand in relation to this narrator, and to this style itself, to the significant extent that style is worldview, is ethics. Styron's is the style of someone who appears unable to articulate the moral difference between great and small, and worse, seems not to care much whether such a distinction exists in the end. Thus, it isn't long before the satirical wit of the novel's gaudy high style ceases to amuse, and the remainder of the novel reads like the fictional equivalent of wearing a clown suit to a wake.

Regarding the Second World War, so much has already been written that it seems difficult to be surprised by anything anymore. However, this topic still attracts, and it is doubtful whether there will ever be an end to this attraction. It is ineradicable and immeasurable. Look, it has been almost a century already. This time it's not about Lithuania - but about the neighboring Poles. Meanwhile, the incomprehensible plans of A. Hitler constantly strike painfully - to wipe Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc. off the face of the earth. It is even more可怕 to realize that it was not far from achieving the goal.

The heroine of the book, the Pole Sofi, is portrayed by the author as broken and depressed, having survived the horror of the Auschwitz concentration camp and found strange refuge in America - in the shelter of the schizophrenic Jew Nathan. W. Styron masterfully weaves the plot, revealing more and more details of Sofi's story. The culminating episode - Sofi's choice - is shocking. Throughout the plot, Sofi constantly lies, trying to hide the bitter moments of getting into the concentration camp and surviving there. At first, this author's intention seemed strange, but later it seems so necessary and perfectly suited to describe the process of a person's disclosure of himself, of his own dirty secrets.

The narrator, Stingo, is a young American, a budding writer, who is smitten with the passionate artist Sofi. The author chooses an interesting way to intertwine the story of the two heroes through the motif of sex, which is dominant in this book. Sex as consolation, sex as gratitude, sex as a way to forget, sex out of love, sex out of passion, sex as punishment and reward, first-time sex, wild sex, animalistic sex, lesbian sex, sex out of duty, sex as a drug, sex as a narcotic, sex as a way to control another person, in short - sex for all occasions in life. The author's idea is original and does not imitate anything.

The third character in the love triangle, Nathan, reacts painfully to the unforgivable hatred towards the Jewish people. Although he himself was unable to save the fate of his fellow countrymen - sent to non-existence in the ovens of the concentration camp - the man finds himself a victim (Sofi) on whom he can take out his anger for the atrocities committed against the Jews. It is no secret that most Poles and other European peoples, driven by mortal fear, collaborated with the Germans, carrying out the genocide of the Jewish people. So what drives Sofi to suffer in the destructive shelter of Nathan: love or guilt? Across the Atlantic, the Jew becomes a scapegoat, the Pole becomes a traitor, whom everyone beats everywhere, and the American remains the good peacemaker, with a clear conscience, the mediator between good and evil.

The novel is by no means unambiguous, leaving the reader in doubt about the topic and the problems raised, in search of the values of life. I recommend it.