William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice takes us to post-WWII Brooklyn. It's not the poverty-ridden borough of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, but neither is it modern-day wealthy hipster Brooklyn. It's in-between, an "ethnic" (read: mostly Jewish) working-class neighborhood. It's in a boarding house there that our narrator, aspiring writer and native Southerner Stingo, finds himself after he quits his dead-end publishing house job and can't afford Manhattan any longer. His first day in his new room, he's treated to the sound of noisy, athletic sex in the room right above his...and not too long after, he meets the lovers, Sophie and Nathan, in the midst of an awful, emotionally and physically violent public fight.

The pair are soon reconciled, though, and Stingo is quickly drawn into their orbit. Beautiful Sophie is a Polish survivor of Auschwitz who does secretarial work for a chiropractor, and the mercurial Nathan is an American Jewish medical researcher, and Stingo falls a little bit in love with both of them as he begins to write a novel based in his experiences of the South. But another messy fight and breakup between Sophie and Nathan ultimately reveals that neither of them is exactly who they seem to be and makes their tragic end seem inevitable.

This took me unusually long to get through: not because the subject matter is tough, even though it is, but because the book is just dense. Styron's prose tends towards the purple, and while usually I'm down with books that are on the overwritten side, it's a lot, you guys. It feels like the writing is struggling against the story, almost, trying to keep it from sweeping over the reader. There are plenty of remarkable passages, but the ratio of those to portions that drag isn't nearly high enough.

The story of Sophie and Nathan, when it manages to take off, is sweeping and powerful and dramatic (if a bit on the Freudian side...there's a lot of eros/thanatos stuff going on). But what grinds it to a halt is the character of Stingo. He's an obvious writer-insert character, and Styron badly overestimates how interesting the portion of the book that's devoted to his sexual frustration is. It's not only boring, it's cringe-worthy, especially the section where he jerks himself off while sharing a hotel room with his father and makes so much noise when he finishes that he wakes his dad up. I'm not going to say that no one wants to read about that because maybe someone does, but it's tonally discordant with a book that's mostly about the evils humans inflict on themselves and each other and the way we tell our own stories to try to shape the world into a way we can better cope with it. There's greatness here, but it desperately needed a better editor to cut it and make it shine like it should have. As is, it's worth reading but not something I'd honestly recommend. ( )

I read this as part of my illegal books 2023 and forgot to post it in Feb.

This is a bullshit book. If you've only seen the movie, stick with that. I got nearly half-way through the book, and I know more about the main character's penis than I do about Sophie. This wasn't an illegal book because it was about Nazis. It was an illegal book because the main character goes on and on and on about masturbating while thinking about Sophie. Before he meets her. He watches her from his window. And masturbates. It's creepy. I do not care that it is a classic. The protagonist is a dirty creep.

Why are men like Styron praised for writing books like this? Ask yourself this question objectively.

This is one of those books Twain was referring to when he quipped:
“′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don't read.”

I saw the movie Sophie’s Choice many years ago, and like most people, was deeply moved and disturbed by the experience. I have never watched it again, but have seen several discussions of the movie recently, leading me to realize that I had never read the book, which is somewhat unusual. So, I elected to remedy the situation.

I do not recall the details of the movie in enough specificity to say whether the movie accurately tracks with the book, but I’ve never heard otherwise, so will assume that it does. I do not remember most of the movie other than the “choice” and reading the book did not jog my memory in that regard.

I can only say that the book is extremely well written and I found it captivating. I was not prepared for the extremely sexually charged content, but was certainly not in any way put off by it. It could be an issue for some readers, but given the subject matter, if you can wade through Auschwitz, you can probably make it through a little (well, really a lot) of sex.

If you are getting ready to purchase this book, you have likely seen the movie, or at least are familiar with its subject matter. If not, be aware that it is perhaps the most disturbing account, though fictional, of events occurring during the Holocaust. And while fictional, many of the events likely occurred dozens, if not hundreds of times every day. It should be an emotional experience to read this book. If it is not, you have issues that need to be addressed. ( )

The story of Sophie, a holocaust survivor who has made her way to Brooklyn, NY. A complicated person in a relationship with Nathan who has his own issues. The story is told by Stingo who tells us the story of Sophie and Nathan. Styron uses a lot of archaic words that I needed to have a dictionary in order to look up these words. ( )

Sophie es una muchacha polaca, dulce y de pálida hermosura que vive en una casa de huéspedes del Brooklyn de los años cuarenta junto a Nathan, un joven judío obsesionado por el pasado, y Stingo, el tercero en discordia, un joven procedente del sur que llega convencido de que será un escritor de éxito. Tres personalidades que se relacionarán íntimamente en un ambiente en apariencia alegre y desenfadado después de la guerra que ha azotado al mundo durante seis años.