This is a long page read but it is definitely worth your time. He is so good I can't wait to have a second serving. View all 15 comments. May 03, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: It was the subject of a relatively well-received movie starring Meryl Streep. It is wildly ambitious, chronically unfocused, irritating and ostentatious, precisely detailed, overly-written, soaring, gutter-dwelling, psychologically acute, digressionary, complex, utterly narcissistic, and an absolute masterpiece.
This book is the best kind of sprawling mess there is. This book made me laugh. It made me cringe. Part of it made me embarrassed for Styron or the editor. Other parts made me extremely envious. Classics are usually works of art you must wrestle with. This is a classic. The story is set in post-war New York City beautifully wrought in It is narrated in the first person by a young, transplanted southerner who calls himself Stingo. It bears mentioning, I suppose, that Stingo is a thinly veiled version of Styron himself. Like Styron, Stingo came north from the Tidewater to pursue writerly ambitions.
Both are terminated from that position by the same act of defiance. Stingo also — no surprises here — is fascinated by Nat Turner, and eventually writes a novel about him.
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Stingo — though not ever, I assume, Styron — meets two remarkable people while staying at a NYC boarding house. They are Nathan, a young, brilliant Jewish man who works at Pfizer; and Sophie, a Polish woman who survived the camp at Auschwitz. From the start, Stingo is both intensely attracted to the couple especially Sophie and repelled by the violent tumultuousness they openly display.
Living beneath them, he hears them making love and fighting, both with passionate intensity. Very shortly, he becomes obsessed with them. This book is a meander more than anything, equal parts frustrating and breathtaking. Early on, for instance, Stingo takes a fair amount of time to describe to us the publishing job — reading manuscripts and writing summaries — that he is shortly to lose. What do these pages have to do with anything? It goes where it wants, when it wants. He is a navel gazer of the first order. There are dueling tragedies at play in this novel.
First, the tragedy of the Holocaust, as symbolized by Sophie and Nathan. All tragedy is local, I suppose. Many times while reading I actually paused to ponder: Styron does make any effort to partition of the all-time deadly-serious Auschwitz scenes from the Stingo-is-sexually-frustrated scenes. The passage of time allows for human tragedy to become literary drama. The Holocaust has not been immune to this. Even so, the friction between the fictional and real-life elements that Styron mixes is so jarring that it can uncomfortably draw attention to itself.
There are two incredible, lengthy set pieces within Auschwitz, one of which includes a razor-intense encounter with Commandant Rudolf Hoess. There is also a marathon sex scene that goes on for three pages. I was conflicted while reading it. Page to page, my forbearance towards Styron spiked and dipped. When I put the book down, though, it didn't leave me right away. This is a book that resonates.
It is mad and loopy; it is powerful and passionate. It is the kind of book that I want to read again for the first time. May 13, Cheryl rated it it was amazing Shelves: Confessional monologues to serve as counter narratives. Flashbacks from an American boarding house to Auschwitz. An intriguing love triangle. Secrets and lies unfolding with each new chapter. Sex, written with meticulousness. This is how Styron gets you to stick with this intricately woven and stylistically stupendous novel. For synchronous with the stunning effect she made on my eyes as she stood there arrested in the doorway--blinking at the gloom, her flaxen hair drenched in the evening gold- Confessional monologues to serve as counter narratives.
For synchronous with the stunning effect she made on my eyes as she stood there arrested in the doorway--blinking at the gloom, her flaxen hair drenched in the evening gold--I listened to myself give a thin but quite audible and breathless half-hiccup. I was still moronically in love with her. The trauma experienced by a Polish woman at Auschwitz, the ideological dilemmas a Southerner-turned-New Yorker and writer must confront, the double life an intellectual Northerner must live, are all compiled to highlight the psychological feat of this novel.
But I will say this. Even with the angst and stupidity and trauma and depression and anxiety and ideology and drunken stupor and disdain of life and craft and art, each character seems to grow. With each turn of the page, something new develops, some story unwinds, some secret is revealed. This is what I liked most about this book—even with the sad ending. Plus, the telling signs that a book has deeply influenced me: There is something neurotic, melancholic and strangely pleasing about this novel—even with its gilded prose and festooned paragraphs that at first strikes you as a writer trying too hard.
Yes, here, tremendous effort was put forth to write an ambitious novel. Here, the effort was successful. Now I must see the movie… View all 31 comments. Jul 01, Petra Eggs rated it did not like it Shelves: One of those books everyone else loved and I loathed. I thought the book was pointless and overwrought, rather like Meryl Streep's acting in the film of the same name.
View all 9 comments. Feb 03, Alex rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Styron gets knocked for two reasons. The first is that he's an appropriater: As he's neither black nor Jewish, some black and Jewish people are like wtf are you doing with my history. The second knock is that he writes clear and exciting prose with a lot of fancy words, leading Martin Amis to call him a "thesaurus of florid commonplaces. Stingo is about to write a novel about Nat Turner, so it's not a stretch to call him a stand-in for Styron.
James Baldwin, a friend and defender, said that "He writes out of reasons similar to mine - about something that hurt him and frightened him. He's shaken by the reality of it. Stingo figures out exactly what he was doing on the morning that Sophie arrived at Auschwitz: This is his point, repeated often: American slavery looms over the story.
Styron would like us to remember that we're sitting around in a country built on genocide, acting all horrified about what Nazis did. Stingo is supported in part by a treasure found in an ancestor's basement; the treasure is the proceeds from the sale of a slave. The third character in the book is Nathan, Sophie's lover, and he embodies this human schizophrenia literally. In the end, view spoiler [Sophie commits suicide with Nathan. What was happening that morning as Sophie, our destroyed heroine, arrived at Auschwitz was the deepest evil Styron can think of. You probably know what the choice was, right?
I'd never read the book or seen the movie but I've been using it as a joke for years: I've rarely been so crushed by a novel. Styron is less interested in Sophie's choice than in the fact that she was forced to make it. Here's the worst thing in the world, he says.
Styron didn't make the choice up; he got it from Hannah Arendt, who says she got it from Camus. But could it happen? Of course it could; if we can't prove this exact story, we have ample proof of stories like it. Who could do it? Could you do it? Could someone be doing it right now? Styron believes that evil can happen anywhere, any time, to anyone. It could be happening now, as you read this review. Maybe you're eating a banana. You are not intrinsically better than slaveowners or Nazis.
You're lucky that as yet you haven't had to decide whether to resist or submit. But this Holocaust victim, tattooed on her hand, in her heart and soul, Auschwitz's purgatory, is hopelessly in an undetachable love, lust, anguish, masochistic, and redeeming relationship with a Northern Jew. And this prejudiced yet genius of a charmer, suffers from fatal capricious fits. Oh and also, being a 22 year old hapless virgin, he is quite horny, plus there's a lot of heart-wrenching stuff from the holocaust which we all have heard about.
All of this might sound like an avaricious formula of a super hit plot from Styron, thus finding in it a large section of haters which, quite frankly and obviously, misses the complete picture.
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Because really, there's a lot more and through this wanting review, I attempt to venture into some of that. After turning the last page of this book, like many others, I too was left with an emptiness, but the strange thing about it was that I didn't feel like filling it with anything. Especially hope, the hypocritical, stalker of a wily worm hope which creeps in like a disguised devil to fill you up with a sense of redemption, holding in abeyance the banal devil this life is.
So, inevitably when the gruesome reality strikes, destroying all hope , you find yourself stranded and deserted, because with all your might you were holding onto this faith, but now you've lost it, only to find it creeping in again. Not all of us have to face such ordeal with life, but Sophie had to. Being a survivor of one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind, Auschwitz , there are some traits which we would all expect in her: Anxiety, paranoia, inferiority complex, melancholy, apathy, they are all there, but there's love too. Mad, unreasonable love for her savior Nathan , who loves her the same and claims her to be his own.
But, the humbug stability that Sophie yearns for, is never to be found. Because of hope , that someday everything will be alright knowing in her heart that that's not possible, rendering herself ever on the verge of ending her perdurable life, which seemed so irrelevant, precarious, merciless. Perhaps that at least. A piece of human being but yes, a human being.
We really need to understand that it's only humans who are capable of such atrocities and it's only humans who can endure them. One of the things I particularly liked about this book is the first person narrative of the amatuer 22 year old Stingo , because perhaps the facts that he hadn't seen much of this brute world, had carried the guilt of his ancestral slavery, had found first real friends in Sophie and Nathan, altogether gave an indispensable fresh voice to this tragic tale.
Of course, the credit goes to the brilliance of William Styron. In the last few pages, Styron reveals the choice that Sophie had to make and live with. The choice that drives her remaining life with unendurable guilt because she really couldn't choose. But afterall she did choose: While I'm pretty sure, I'm never going to meet people like Sophie, Nathan, or Stingo, but having known them in these last few days, they will forever be the three unforgettable strangers I almost "understood".
View all 19 comments. Oct 26, Elise rated it liked it. I finally finished it, yes all pages, and my reaction to "Sophie's Choice" is mixed. I spent years urged by friends to read this book, but I was afraid of what I would find in its pages, especially being a mom. It turns out my fears were completely unfounded. This book is not at all what I thought it would be--a moving story of one woman's time at Auschwitz and the awful things she endures there as a mother.
At first, I found the young something, Stingo, annoying because of his obsession with trying to get laid. But then, after I started to get further into the novel, I became grateful for the comic relief that his perspective offered. However, it was also painfully obvious that Stingo was indeed William Styron, so the perspective was at times overly self-indulgent and out of place.
That said, I am well aware that Stingo is here to represent the naive American juxtaposed with the worldly wise and world weary European perspective of Sophie a Polish Catholic , and that Stingo brings with him the American South's dark chapter of the history of slavery to parallel the Holocaust.
- Tír na nÓg. Das Schicksal der Welt (German Edition);
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- Across The Sapphire Seas.
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- Sophie's Choice () - Rotten Tomatoes.
But frankly, as one more than familiar with these themes, one who specializes in American literature, did Styron really have to be so redundant about it? This book was screaming for a good editor to lop off at least pages from it's heft, most of which didn't add to the narrative, especially the parts that read like Stingo's dissertation, secondary sources about the Holocaust and all.
The other problem I have with this narrative is characterization, especially the characters of both Sophie and Nathan. There is so much missing from Sophie's characterization maybe because she is viewed through the eyes of horny Stingo , and it keeps me from being fully emotionally connected to her throughout the narrative, and this for me is the novel's major shortcoming.
And frankly, I just despised Nathan. I know Sophie is a masochistic victim who lived through some serious horrors. I know she made some choices she will never forgive herself for in the past, and so Nathan is the punishment she has inflicted on herself. But what the hell is Nathan's problem besides the ones I won't mention here because I believe spoilers have no place in a book review?
He is an American born Jew, born into wealth and privilege, enough wealth that he can actually help himself to get better. Some of the scenes between Sophie and Nathan were more disturbing and horrific than the ones that took place at Auschwitz. Is that really what Styron hoped to accomplish? This story is as much about lies as it is about choices, lies that we hide behind to protect ourselves. So what happens when we confess the truth? That is a question worth thinking about. In spite of the fact that this book is very well written with regard to Styron's use of language and the rhythm of his prose thus, the 3 star rating , there was just too much hype preceding the book.
Likewise, there was way too much build up in the book itself regarding the nature of Sophie's actual "choice" too. Then when he finally gets there, Styron glosses over it, and that was the one place I would have liked him to linger. That detracted from the emotional effect of it, at least for this reader. Now I look forward to seeing the film. Hopefully, it cleaned up some of Styron's messes. Oct 28, Moses Kilolo rated it it was amazing.
First, I liked everything about this book: And the way everything that went down in Auschwitz is narrated here is very heartbreaking, just as is the relationship between Nathan and Sophie. But the question that resounds, as Styron asks, is: At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God. But again comes Styron's response; At Auschwitz, where was man? This is a book that provides a heartfelt account of one of histories darkest era, as well as what such happening do to people, even after so many years.
Such Damage, I think, at times, if not most, or always, may as well be permanent. Possibly, if Sophie survived it, she did not survive the damage caused, the loss suffered, the pain in the memory, of Jan, of Eva, of what could have been and never will View all 5 comments. Sep 10, Amber rated it did not like it Recommended to Amber by: By the time I learned the "true" story and the big reveal I just didn't care anymore.
It is horrible that this is based on millions of true stories but this particular story could have been more succinct. View all 4 comments. Mar 24, William2 rated it it was amazing Shelves: I've read it twice, maybe three times. I hope to read it again someday. Aug 31, Nathan Oates rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: I read this book at Amy's prompting and found it one of the most complex reading experiences of my life. At times, I hated this book: The writing about the holoca I read this book at Amy's prompting and found it one of the most complex reading experiences of my life.
The writing about the holocaust is riveting, horrifying and heartbreaking I felt like vomitting from horror once or twice, felt my stomach clenching many times. It is extremely rare to find a book that manages to evoke such a complex of emotions and responses over the course of pages, and this is the book's triumph: All it's flaws and there are many merely add to the complexity of the characters, the style, the subject.
Contemporary writers should look to this book for evidence of the capacities of the novel to engage with life in all its muddled, vicious evil and find a way to make beauty from it. Obviously, one star is a bit dramatic. I didn't like this book but it was beautifully written--Styron is no slouch with words--and the characters and situation were vividly drawn. The "choice" Sophie had to make was a hellish one and unlike some reviewers here, I was deeply affected and I thought it explained a lot about her character.
By contrast the lives and issues of Stingo and Nathan seem thin and pathetic. Which was the problem. A writer once said I think it was Vonnegut Obviously, one star is a bit dramatic. A writer once said I think it was Vonnegut give your readers at least one character to root for.
I couldn't root for any of the three main characters. Nathan was mentally ill, Stingo was insufferably self-absorbed. Even poor Sophie, who was a brilliantly-realized character was so without fight or self-respect by the time we meet her, that Stingo's banal lust for her bordered on necrophilia. Perhaps in the context of post-War America and the self-hate citizens must have felt Styron was suffering from manic-depression at the time he wrote it. I think that accounts for a great deal. I rarely throw books across the room.
Sophie's Choice
I threw this one. May 15, Erika rated it did not like it. Well, I finished it. And I despised every moment of it, from the writing to the characters. Maybe I just don't understand or appreciate a writing style such as Styron's, but I just found it incredibly tedious and tiresome to wade through all of Stingo's incessant and lust-fueled rambling.
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- The Politics of Sex Trafficking: A Moral Geography (Critical Criminological Perspectives).
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I hated him and in turn ended up absolutely hating Sophie and Nathan. When you reach the climatic point in the novel and you don't feel even the slightest twinge of anything other than, thank god this means i Well, I finished it. When you reach the climatic point in the novel and you don't feel even the slightest twinge of anything other than, thank god this means it is almost over, then you know that you should just call it a day and admit failure.
Huge, gigantic and miserable no go for me. Aug 13, Dan rated it it was amazing Shelves: Alright I am very late to the party in reading this classic. There are quite literally hundreds of lines that were perfectly rendered. Mi-am adus aminte deci, subit, de Nathan Landau, personajul cheie al romanului "Alegerea Sofiei". Nu puteam -in fine! Oct 13, Thomas rated it it was amazing Shelves: Sophie's Choice revolves around three characters and three story lines. The protagonist, Stingo, is an aspiring writer from the South who stumbles upon Sophie and Nathan when moving into his apartment in New York.
Sophie serves as the beautiful and damaged love interest, a Polish woman and a survivor of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. Nathan, a handsome and successful biologist, brings both darkness and light into their lives. Stingo's journey as an individual and a writer, Sophie's troubl Sophie's Choice revolves around three characters and three story lines. Stingo's journey as an individual and a writer, Sophie's troubled past, and Sophie and Nathan's tumultuous relationship all come together in a convoluted, intensely passionate triangle that will break readers' hearts.
This was my first time reading Styron. While his writing was not as superb in the literary sense as that of other authors, his prose conveyed all of the emotion essential to the story. The movie is too Hollywood in look and feel, and the flashback and narration are too conventional, and yet the image of the sickly and pale Meryl Streep recollecting her ordeal lingers in memory long after the film is over. Though this film is ultimately just an exercise in melodrama, the character of Sophie Zawistowska is very complex and interesting to watch, and by no means hampered by the brilliant performance from Meryl Streep.
Essentially this film is pegged as a story about the Holocaust, but it's much more than that. Though there are undoubted horrors seen onscreen, and this film deals with true facts about the inhuman exploits of the Nazis, the story is more about guilt. Everyone hides something horrible in their past, Sophie included, and that shame and repugnance shape whatever decisions we make in the future.
Sophie has a very dire choice to make, and because of it she feels she doesn't deserve happiness in the future. Atrocities loom in her periphery, but she's trying to be friendly with Stingo MacNichol and romantic with Nathan Kline , cheery and forgotten to her past, untied to her family. Using the Holocaust as a backdrop helps permeate the grandiosity of her guilt, and shows the terrors inflicted upon her, though any number of other historical atrocities would have served the same major purpose of influencing Sophie's guilt.
It's not until the very last minutes of the film that we realize the true gravity of that guilt, and we understand the outcome for Sophie, Stingo, and Nathan. While it may not have aged especially well, there's still such vibrancy, and the illuminating performance from Streep will hold weight even decades in the future. In Brooklyn in the years following WWll and a young Southern writer falls for a refugee of Auschwitz who is herself embroiled with a charismatic American Jew, only all is not rosy. Everyone is carrying baggage and the film opines that the choices we make especially with relationships are directly related to the baggage we carry.
Its a mouthful to relay in the space of a film but the actors make it easier, lead by Streep who is at her most luminous. Hmm, let's see here: Hoenstly, that's really the highlight here. Essentially this film is just high melodrama with a Holocaust stroy thrown in as a way to make a love triangle seem more interesting. That is, of course, a simplification, but not too far from the truth. I did like this film though, even if I don't see it as beign a real cinematic masterpiece or anything. Maybe had the film focused more on the Holocaust stuff and less on the post war stuff, or maybe had they taken the titular moment and made it the real centerpiece or something I could find this film to be more brilliant, or at least as brilliant as the performances.
That's all anyone seems ot talk about here are the performances, well, mostly Streep's. It's true, this is her greatest achievement as an actress, and this is a beuatiful turn she gives as a Holocaust survivor with a really dark past. The others are good too though. I used to think that peter MacNicol was only good at playing the creep in Ghostbusters II; I'm happy to report that he does a really good job here as well. Kevin Kline gives a remarkable performance as a really unbalanced man with whom you can never predict what he will say or do next. They both get overshadowed by Streep, but that's kinda understandable.
I liked the music, and the look was decent, but the stroy just didn't quite have me like maybe it should have. The scene where the film gets it's title is a very heartbreaking and emotional scene-I just wish the rest of the film could have been as focused and stirring. Maybe they could have trimmed some of the running time in the process. All in all, a decent film, but nothing extremely remarkable, although that goes for the film as a whole, and not the individual parts that make it up. You should see this if only for the acting. One may think that such a statement is overrated, but I disagree.
The work here mostly Streep's will forever be one of the greatest examples of successful acting ever committed to film. Sophie's Choice takes you on quite a memorable rollercoaster ride of emotion. It's a film that has great characters and great actors to back them up. You really feel for these individuals and go through all their pains as well as their happy times.
It's not a 'feel good' movie if that is what you are looking for, but it is an interesting perspective on what many people have gone through from a war-torn era. It's almost like 2 films in one, or at least two storylines in one film, therefore it makes it quite a long one, but it is necessary and leads to an entertaining film. More Top Movies Trailers.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow: After Nathan believes Sophie has betrayed him again, he calls Sophie and Stingo on the telephone and fires a gun in a violent rage. Sophie and Stingo flee to a hotel. She reveals to him that, upon arrival at Auschwitz, she was forced to choose which one of her two children would be gassed and which would proceed to the labor camp. To avoid having both children killed, she chose her son, Jan, to be sent to the children's camp, and her daughter, Eva, to be sent to her death.
Sophie and Stingo make love, but while Stingo is sleeping, Sophie returns to Nathan. Sophie and Nathan commit suicide by taking cyanide. Stingo moves to a small farm his father recently inherited in southern Virginia to finish writing his novel. After obtaining a bootlegged copy of the script, she went after Pakula, and threw herself on the ground, begging him to give her the part.
The film was mostly shot in New York City, with Sophie's flashback scenes shot afterwards in Yugoslavia. Pakula allowed the cast to rehearse for three weeks, and was open to improvisation from the actors, "spontaneous things", according to Streep. Sophie's Choice received positive reviews.
Sophie's Choice () - Plot Summary - IMDb
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "a fine, absorbing, wonderfully acted, heartbreaking movie. It is about three people who are faced with a series of choices, some frivolous, some tragic. As they flounder in the bewilderment of being human in an age of madness, they become our friends, and we love them. Despite earnest intentions and top talent involved, lack of chemistry among the three leading players and over-elaborated screenplay make this a trying experience to sit through. Thanks in large part to Miss Streep's bravura performance, it's a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell.
Yet, whatever the film's overall problems, the role of Sophie, its beautiful, complex, worldly heroine, gives Meryl Streep the chance at bravura performance and she is, in a word, incandescent. The whole plot is based on a connection that isn't there—the connection between Sophie and Nathan's relationship and what the Nazis did to the Jews. Eventually, we get to the Mystery—to Sophie's Choice—and discover that the incident is garish rather than illuminating, and too particular to demonstrate anything general.
Streep's characterization was voted the third-greatest movie performance of all time by Premiere Magazine.