This book was first published in 1979. I must have read it within a couple of years of that date. So, yes, it's been a while.

I remembered the characters, and the setting, and the gist of the plot, including Sophie's "choice". But the details, oh, the details! I'm not sure I appreciated Styron's genius the first time around.

The way he created unforgettable characters and wove them into a haunting tale of love and guilt that combined the legacy of slavery in the south with the horror of Auschwitz is truly remarkable. The way he incorporated details from his own life and career into the fictional character of Stingo adds an extra layer of authenticity. And the language that sings even when describing unspeakable acts of evil is a testament to his writing skill.

The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?" And the answer: "Where was Man?" After an incredible story that wrings every last bit of emotion from the reader, it ends the only way it can for Nathan and Sophie and Stingo. But the last sentence in the book leaves us something to hope for. "This was not judgement day----only morning. Morning: excellent and fair." It gives us a glimmer of light in the midst of the darkness, a reminder that even after the worst of times, there is always the possibility of a new beginning.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.” Emily Dickinson

Styron masterfully resurrects the Brooklyn of the forties and its vibrant intellectualism through the eyes of three distinct characters. Their disparate pasts converge in the optimistic vision of America, distancing the narrative from trite clichés and employing the inimitable diction of a true Southern voice. The lush, descriptive prose, laced with a sharp humorous tone and hints of dark eroticism, masks the profound grief within. It weaves together the ongoing contradictions of a Southerner's life in the North and the collision between the remnants of corrosive Puritanism and the emergence of a new liberal society, interspersed with intermittent and often unreliable flashbacks of mutilated lives and immeasurable suffering during the Holocaust.

Sophie, a Polish Catholic who fled Auschwitz for the land of opportunity, is tormented by guilt for her "unheroic" choice. Her tragic story is rife with shame, fear, and bewilderment over the senseless atrocities committed against her. When she meets Nathan, a charming but volatile Jew who views himself as an authority on anguish, her desolation gives way to his passionate lovemaking and obsessive tendencies. Meanwhile, Stingo, an aspiring writer from Virginia and Styron's alter-ego, witnesses their downfall and meta-narrates their doomed path while harboring a platonic love for Sophie.

Styron's composed momentum and exuberant phrasing, rich with vivid literary and classical music references, direct a dichotomous dialogue between harmony and destruction, love and its delirious addiction, hope and death. The questions he poses are profound: Is life a hideous symphony or the result of conscious choices? How can survivors endure the gift of life? Do individual choices matter in collective madness? Styron delves into the murky waters of the human soul and the virulent currents of morality, confronting individual choices versus collective responsibility and the human propensity for domination. In the end, he leaves us with the haunting question: Did Sophie ever truly have a choice?

Styron has faced criticism for two main reasons. Firstly, he is accused of appropriation. In his Pulitzer-winning "Confessions of Nat Turner," he took on the story of the famous slave revolutionary, and here in "Sophie's Choice," he tackles the Holocaust. Since he is neither black nor Jewish, some in the black and Jewish communities question what he is doing with their history. Secondly, his writing style, which is clear and exciting with many fancy words, has led Martin Amis to label him a "thesaurus of florid commonplaces."

The narrator of "Sophie's Choice," Stingo, admits that in his writing career, he has always been drawn to morbid themes such as suicide, rape, murder, military life, marriage, and slavery. He is about to write a novel about Nat Turner, making him a sort of stand-in for Styron. James Baldwin, a friend and defender, said that Styron writes out of similar reasons - about something that hurt and frightened him.

What hurts and frightens Styron is evil, and "Sophie's Choice" is centered around this. He is deeply shaken by its reality. Stingo vividly recalls what he was doing on the morning Sophie arrived at Auschwitz - eating a banana on a beautiful day in North Carolina. This emphasizes his point that at any moment, while we are living our ordinary lives, someone in the world is capable of the most profound evil. American slavery looms large in the story, and Styron wants us to remember that we are living in a country built on genocide, yet act horrified by what the Nazis did. Stingo is supported in part by a treasure found in an ancestor's basement, which is the proceeds from the sale of a slave.

The third character, Nathan, Sophie's lover, embodies the human schizophrenia literally. He is unstable, often charming but sometimes descending into violent madness. He turns out to be a paranoid schizophrenic. According to Styron, this is humanity. In the end, Sophie commits suicide with Nathan. The book is truly a bummer.

The morning Sophie arrived at Auschwitz, the destroyed heroine, was experiencing the deepest evil Styron could conceive. We all know the famous "Sophie's Choice," right? Even if I had never read the book or seen the movie, I had been using it as a joke for years. But the ending of this book upset me so much that I now feel terrible for ever making that joke. I have rarely been so crushed by a novel.

Styron is less concerned with Sophie's choice itself than with the fact that she was forced to make it. This, he says, is the worst thing in the world. He didn't invent this choice; he got it from Hannah Arendt, who in turn said she got it from Camus. But could such a thing happen? Of course it could. Even if we can't prove this exact story, we have plenty of evidence of similar ones. Who could do it? Could you? Could someone be doing it right now?

Styron believes that evil can occur anywhere, at any time, to anyone. It could be happening right now as you read this review. Maybe you're eating a banana. You are not inherently better than slaveowners or Nazis. You're just lucky that so far you haven't had to decide whether to resist or submit. He poses the question: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?" And the answer: "Where was man?” Styron wants us to be prepared to be there.

I know, I know. At the rate I'm going, I'll soon have abandoned more books than I've finished.

I'm just not so keen on contemporary literature, I suppose. Fiction, for the most part, has become indistinguishable from magazine writing: pretentious yet self-deprecating, staccato (\\"relatable\\") language, a smattering of intellectual/poetic adornment, some social commentary, and the contents of your medicine cabinet--to show that this is an intimate communication between us. Sophie's Choice is all that. And all that aside, I was really loving it...to begin with.

I watched the film when I was very young and I, along with the rest of the world population, pleaded with the television, \\"Leave him! Sophie, leave him! Marry Stingo! He's the one who really cares about you!\\" Now 31 years old, I know the power of a Nathan. I too loved a nurturer/sadist. After he left me, I went into a deep depression. And after that, I met George. George is Stingo of that film,--his views, his experiences. He even looks a little like Peter MacNicol. (He hates it when I say that.) Though less gentle than my boyfriend, and less gentle than MacNicol's portrayal, this character (the narrative voice) evoked my boyfriend,--to begin with,--like no one since Sebastian Flyte. I love Stingo. I've always loved Stingo. So you can imagine my utter heartbreak as he gradually revealed his jaded, pervy thoughts.

Very early in the story there's a rape scene. The assault happens in public, in the dark, on the subway. It was tastefully, poignantly written, I must say. In no way would I characterize it as erotica. I was particularly struck by the way it was subtly paralleled against an earlier scene where Stingo pines for an unknown woman outside his window. Like Stingo, the rapist is anonymous. Like Stingo, his lust has been driven \\"underground,\\" so to speak. Again, I say, well done. This book, as we all know, is largely about guilt. I certainly don't begrudge a man looking out his window at fully dressed women in broad daylight. Stingo is a good man. But there's a monster in us all. The character is made all the more appealing for his candor.

What started to bother me, however, was the way he kept harping on the notion that the rape would have been less traumatic had it been less veiled. I get it: Her attacker could be anyone, anyone on the street, in the halls of her building. That is indeed terrifying. Secrets do, indeed, fester. But the way Stingo/Styron was carrying on, I started to wonder what he was getting at. Here's what he was getting at:

\\"...her shame was anything but lessoned by the fact that she was Catholic and Polish and a child of her time and place--that is to say, a young woman brought up with puritanical repressions and sexual taboos as adamantine as those of any Alabama Baptist maiden. (It would take Nathan, she told me later, Nathan with his liberated and passionate carnality, to unlock the eroticism in her which she never dreamed she possessed.) Add to this the indwelling shame of the rape the unconventional, to say the least, the grotesque way she had been attacked--and the embarrassment she felt at having to tell [her doctor:]...\\"

...Whereas a sexually liberated atheist, attacked openly, will be juuuust fine. (My Nathan's \\"passionate carnality\\" did more locking than unlocking, but I'll leave that alone. Sophie isn't me.) There does seem to be a hint of righteous indignation on Stingo's part.

And then...

\\"...I felt that there was being thrust on me a priceless reward for the vigor and zeal with which I had embraced my Art. Like any author worth his salt, I was about to receive my just bounty, that necessary adjunct to hard work--necessary as food and drink-- which revived the fatigued wits and sweetened all life. Of course I mean by this that for the first time after these many months in New York, finally and safely beyond peradventure, I was going to get a piece of ass.\\"

Well, again, he's just being honest...

\\"Thus during those hours when I had not been immersed in my novel I had thought of Leslie and the approaching tryst, sucking on the nipples of those 'melon-heavy' Jewish breasts...\\"

Okay, that's enough honesty.

\\"That the era became epitomized by Little Miss Cock Tease--the pert number who jerked off a whole generation of her squirming young coevals, allowing moist liberties but with steel-trap relentlessness withholding the big prize, sobbing in triumph as she stole back to the dorm (O that intact membrane! O those those silvery snail tracks on the silken undies!)...\\"

Okay, seriously, William...

\\"[It's:] no one's fault, only that of history...\\"

Yes, it always is. < / sarcasm >

\\"Aside from that disaster, on the afternoon when I met Leslie Lapidus my past experiences had been typically base and fruitless. Which is to say, typically of the forties. I had done a certain amount of smooching, as it was called then, in the balconies of several movie theaters; another time, stranded in the leafy and secret dark tunnel of the local lovers' lane, I had with madly pounding pulse and furtive fingers succeeded in obtaining a few seconds' worth of what was known as 'bare tit'; and once, scenting triumph but nearly fainting with exertion, I managed to wrest off the maidenform bra only to discover a pair of falsies and a boyish chest flat as a ping pong paddle.\\"

You poor thing.

\\"I had not idealized 'femininity' in the silly fashion of the time and therefore I am sure I did not foresee bedding down some chaste Sweet Briar maiden only for a trip to the altar. [Of course, not.:] Somewhere in the halcyon future, I think I must have reasoned, I would meet a cuddlesome, jolly girl who would simply gather me into her with frenzied whoopees, unhindered by that embargo placed upon their flesh by the nasty little Protestants who had so tortured me in the back seats of a score of cars.\\"

Well, hello, Ian McEwan John Updike D. H. Lawrence Creepy Creeperton.

\\"Oh, what ghoulish opportunism are writers prone to.\\"

Indeed. Holocaust/rape victims are HOT.

I wonder what he had to say about the World War II...

I read this decades ago, but I still vividly remember that Styron didn't manage to convince me that this was the choice Sophie would make.

The story presented a complex and heart-wrenching situation, yet something about the way Styron crafted Sophie's decision didn't sit right with me.

Perhaps it was the lack of a more in-depth exploration of her inner turmoil and the forces that could have truly driven her to such a difficult choice.

It felt as if there were gaps in the narrative that prevented me from fully empathizing with Sophie and believing in the authenticity of her decision.

Even after all these years, this aspect of the story has stayed with me, leaving me with a sense of dissatisfaction and a lingering question about whether Styron could have done a better job of making Sophie's choice more believable.

Nonetheless, the overall impact of the work was still significant, and it made me reflect on the nature of human choice and the difficult decisions we are sometimes faced with.

Despite my reservations about this particular element, I still appreciate the power and depth of Styron's writing and the way he was able to bring this tragic story to life.

By the time I learned the "true" story and the big reveal, I just didn't care anymore.

It is truly horrible to think that this is based on millions of real-life events. However, this particular story could have been presented in a more succinct manner.

Perhaps the details were overly convoluted or the pacing was off, causing my initial interest to wane.

Nonetheless, the fact that it is rooted in truth gives it a certain weight and significance.

Maybe with a more streamlined approach, the impact of the story could have been more profound and engaging.

As it stands, I can't help but feel a sense of disappointment.

But perhaps that is also a testament to the power of a well-told story, even when it is based on harsh realities.

I still believe that there is value in sharing these types of stories, as long as they are presented in a way that captures the audience's attention and holds it until the very end.

I persevered with the book out of curiosity. It wasn't so much about finding out her choice as it was about this being a supposed important American novel, and I kept anticipating that "Aha!" moment when it would finally become engaging. Sadly, it was just far too long. I now understand what it's like to endure an excess of foreshadowing. Reading hint after ominous hint about what was to come was truly tiresome.

The narration was clumsy and overly explanatory. Do we really need a recap of an event that was just narrated 50 pages ago? Did Styron assume the audience was too dim-witted to remember the episode well enough to understand an explicit allusion or, heaven forbid, an oblique reference? And did he really have to repeatedly emphasize how frustrated the character was about not having sex just to build up one of the last scenes? I'll concede that perhaps it was intentional to create such an unsympathetic and annoying narrator, but the outcome was irritation and a strong inclination to abandon the book entirely.

Another issue with the narrative voice was Sophie's account of Auschwitz. There were several instances where the quotes around the paragraphs indicated she was speaking, yet the grammar was flawless. As I've already mentioned, it was clumsy, and I can only surmise it was due to poor planning. Styron clearly wanted to have it both ways.

However, there were some beautiful passages interspersed. Most of the excellent material centered around the Auschwitz narrative and the insights it provided Styron to make about human nature and the nature of hellish war. There were some good analogies, especially the rats-in-a-barrel (Jews) versus rats-in-a-burning-building (all other victims).

Of course, this reaffirms my belief that it could have been a much better book by trimming 200 - 300 pages. I'm simply going to assume that most of the "staggering" and "masterful" elements of this work (two adjectives used in the praise section of the edition I read) were beyond my comprehension.

Not Bad Movie & Book Reviews.

@pointblaek

If I were to tell you what this book is about, I myself wouldn't be eager to read it - the history of the Second World War, the dawn (then) and already a good decade after that (now) - how banal and heard a hundred times? Well, it's good that I somehow choose books intuitively and almost never read their descriptions. Otherwise, I might have missed and skipped this incredibly well-written book.

Here is really one of those rare examples where then and now are masterfully arranged; you don't even notice how naturally the action moves into the past or returns to today. And the most interesting thing is that the narrator of all these stories (and at the same time the protagonist of this book) is just like the reader, has not been in that past that is slowly revealed to us. Here there is no omniscient narrator who wants to deceive or mislead you. This once again convinces me that you won't hear any story of Grandma Sofia that miraculously arose due to a letter found in the attic or the uniform of a soldier hidden in the chest.

Another proof of craftsmanship is that both stories, the one that happened then and the one that is happening now, were equally engaging - I thought about both of them even after closing the book, waiting for when I could return to the characters of the book. If the past was more attractive with its story line, plot twists, secrets, then the present was a riot of emotions, characters, experiences, a modern text full of literary references, pulsating with both youthful naivety and painful brand - a chaotic balance that makes the story an ideally executed narrative.

And finally - the characters - all so different, yet so alive and charming, real people, with secrets that they were afraid to reveal not only loudly, but also hid from them even in their thoughts, longing for the impossible or so little, suffering, finding, believing and suspecting, sacrificing and being selfish, multi-layered and diverse - just like in real life: not hateful, not cut out as if from paper, they seem to have really stepped out of our own threshold.

Truly a wonderful book, which has put thoughts here. I think I liked it even more than just after closing the last page. And books that grow in you, instead of fading away, as soon as you start reading the next story - of course, are the very best.

I take great pride in having completed this long and tiresome novel. I truly wished I could have liked it more. However, it's 2020, and I simply can't, with any good conscience, like Sophie's annoying, whining, and needy personality! As a Holocaust survivor, I was supposed to empathize with her, but I never quite understood her point of view. Nathan was more understandable, being damaged and mean. Stingo, on the other hand, was an obsessively confused writer with only one thing on his mind. He was also extremely arrogant and full of himself. It seems as if the author was narrating his subconscious through this troubled character.

This story incorporates elements of mental health and the Holocaust, yet nothing ever gets resolved. The plots just linger and stand alone, much like Sophie's choice, which isn't revealed until the very end.

The prose was romantic and beautiful, but the plot was confounding. It left me with a sense of dissatisfaction. Overall, I would rate this novel a 2 out of 5.

It is very difficult for me to talk about this novel, especially since I have just finished it and have so many ideas to sort out. I will start by saying that if you are expecting a drama that will capture the situation of the Jews during the Holocaust and their life in Auschwitz, Sophie's Choice is not that kind of novel. That's what I initially thought too. However, this novel is different. It is very complex, dealing with many themes and historical periods, and Sophie's story is just a small part. The novel centers around Stingo, a twenty-two-year-old young man who wants to become a writer. The novel itself is about writing a novel, it is metafiction. Hence the fact that it is a bit difficult to read, it is full of details, parody, self-irony, multiple narrators. From the perspective of construction, it is a masterpiece, a true narrative gem.

Stingo meets Sophie and Nathan in Brooklyn in the 1950s, forming a deep relationship with the two. Sophie and Nathan are at least a strange couple, but they have formed a symbiosis and, separately, mean nothing without each other. Their relationship is complicated and hard to explain, but not surprising. Both have something in common that binds them. Sophie becomes dependent on Nathan and what he offers her, a new chance at life, a chance to forget. Everything Sophie does throughout the novel has the sole purpose of forgetting: she drowns in drink, sex, lies and distractions, because that's the only chance to get to a new day. The novel only presents Sophie's life after Auschwitz, in America. Her past comes to light through her conversations with Stingo, most often when drunk. Sophie tells lie after lie, and Stingo, like the reader, is curious and ignorant. No one knows what secrets Sophie hides. This is what makes the novel so special. Her choice represents only one page out of the eight hundred. But the journey to it is the important one. Not Sophie's experiences in Auschwitz, not her life in Krakow and her childhood, not her marriage and family, not her life in Sweden after liberation, but the consequences of these years are in the foreground. What is chosen by a survivor? What does life look like after hell? Can it be about liberation and a new life for a prisoner in Auschwitz?

The novel approaches this theme in a very original way. Sophie shares a part of her chaotic experiences, without regard to chronology, omitting important details, telling lies, only to later come back with clarifications or contradictions, with more entanglements.

The construction of the characters also seemed to me to be extremely original. Sophie is not the victim from Auschwitz that you feel sorry for and accompany on her journey towards a happy ending. She is not the innocent and pious woman who suffers and endures stoically, waiting for divine reward. She renounces God and herself. Sophie enters the scene as a broken woman. She does not pose as a victim, on the contrary, she is aware of the mistakes she has made and the end that awaits her. I really liked her, although I did not agree with her actions. She is the kind of character so strong and well constructed that you can't forget her. Beautiful, seductive, manipulative, powerful, intelligent, Sophie uses all her qualities as best she can to survive physically, because psychologically, she cannot live with her choices.

Sophie's Choice is considered a reference book in world literature, perhaps the best on this theme, but it is not for every type of reader. You need a lot of patience, because it is a difficult novel, with many descriptions, many historical data and explanations, many digressions from the story, many narrative techniques, many characters and many narrators. All these overwhelm you and surely the novel is not to be read in a café or in the evening, after a busy day, it is not for relaxation. The story is disturbing, but it is not that tear-jerking drama, it is presented differently. Besides the theme of the Holocaust, the novel also deals with the theme of slavery, the misunderstandings between the North and the South, but also the position of the artist in society. It is a complex, entangled, sometimes chaotic novel, but extremely good. A masterpiece that should not be missing from anyone's library. :)

Devastating. That single word encapsulates the profound suffering endured by Sophie throughout this book. I had a certain affinity for the narrator and an intense dislike for Nathan, yet the true essence lies with Sophie. Her experiences before and during World War II in Warsaw and Auschwitz are truly harrowing. Having visited Auschwitz two years ago, I noticed a slight inaccuracy in what could be seen from Haus Höss. For instance, the Arbeit sign is not visible from that part of the compound. Nevertheless, the details about life in the camp are realistic and in line with my previous readings (such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel). It serves as a gruesome reminder of why all forms of fascism must be condemned and fought with all our might to prevent a recurrence of the brutality endured by millions of Jews, Poles, gypsies, and homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.

-(Some near spoilers ahead)-
I found the concept of the choices Sophie makes in the book to be deeply poignant. There is an almost palpable sense of hopelessness as we witness that each of her decisions, whether it's to protect her children, or just one child, or to leave, are all ultimately the wrong ones, as death seems to follow in one form or another nearly every time. And yet, had she chosen differently, perhaps nothing would have truly changed. I believe the question boils down to whether Sophie is able to grow and evolve with each choice, and I felt that the real tragedy here is that she doesn't, except for the fact that she is finally able to unburden her soul to Stingo before making her final choice. Styron is clearly展现ing his own powerlessness when confronted with the task of trying to understand and come to terms with the idea of a genocide that occurred during his lifetime. The idea of the absurdity of simultaneity is really fascinating in that regard, and he returns to it several times.

As for the book itself, it is exquisitely written, with some engaging stories and touches of humor sprinkled in towards the beginning before it takes its tragic turn. It is presented in a semi-autobiographical format and makes references to the period when Styron was indeed working on his first book and looking forward to writing his third book about Nat Turner (for which he won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize).

The Academy Award-winning film from 1982 cast the effervescent Meryl Streep as a breathtaking and unforgettable Sophie, with a young Kevin Klein making his first big-screen appearance as Nathan. The film is highly respectful of the book, making only minor editorial changes to adapt it to the 35mm format. The viewer is treated to 2 1/2 hours of primarily staged sets, along with a few sequences depicting a (rather inaccurate) Auschwitz. It may not be the greatest film adaptation of a major novel (I would rank Gone with the Wind, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and To Kill a Mockingbird above it), but it is an absolute classic and a must-see, thanks to the over-the-top performance by the greatest actress of her generation, Meryl Streep.

First, I ran the race and finished!

This author doesn't mind taking his time. The plot is adventurous to say the least.

The story is the account of.....drum roll....wait for it......the happenings in NYC, the South and a German Concentration camp.

So, maybe I should give Styron a break on the length of the book.

Why did it take me a long time to read? This book emotionally drained me.

I literally could not read big chunks without feeling my family would suffer from my depressed manner.

Every page seemed to carry a heavy weight, pulling me deeper into the complex and often harrowing experiences described.

The vivid descriptions of the different settings and the characters' turmoil made it a truly intense read.

I had to constantly pause and reflect, processing the emotions that surged within me.

It was a journey that I both dreaded and couldn't put down, a testament to the power of Styron's writing.