Sophie's Choice

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Summary: A book about life...and its ridiculous choices
Review: One of the most memorable books that I've read. I read it about 15 years ago as a teenager and though I've not re-read it the book has stayed with me. One of the top five books of all time in my list. Absolutely unputdownable with its shocking `choice' aspect and thought-provoking climax. The book, ultimately, reveals (at least to me) the `choices' we human beings are increasingly taking into our hands and thrusting onto other humans and animals. And, in experience, it makes me believe that when there's no hope left..there is God (unlike Sophie and Nathan who do not accept God's `handiwork'). A book to love and characters, troubled in ways that address the problems of all humanity, to pray for!

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Summary: One of the great masterpieces.
Review: Sophie's Choice is a novel unlike any I have ever encountered. The poetic prose flows fom the pages as easily as Sophie's tears. William Styron has created a charachter so amazing in Sophie that she is quite simply the most fascinating I have ever encountered. Stingo and Nathan hold their own against Sophie as well. Sophies love for Nathan is stronger than any in modern literature, and the choice she is forced to make is unbearably heartbreaking. AS I finished this brilliant work of art I couldn't bear to leave the trio, and like Stingo I will forever ponder the unexplainable depths of Sophie and Nathan. This is a treasure to read again and again. Also, Meryl Streep's performance in the film is the best acting in screen history, because she makes Sophie come alive.

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Summary: enchanting, rich imaginative experience
Review: i read this book. watched the film too... the cinematic treatment of the movie is very faithful. the portrayal of sophie is excellent. the author used the voice of stingo.. to tell us about sophie's past...his narration evokes progress and change in his knowledge about the holocaust. sophie's schizophrenic nature has alot to do wioth her childhood..her submissiveness and her relations with the men in her life..although never explicitly told about the nature of sophie's mental heath..i believe she was a very ill women who cann't live with her past. stingo provided the oppurtunity for her to confess all her lies and secret that led to her ultimate choice of either choosing Jan or Eva to die at Auswitz.. She commited the crime of imposing death to her own daughter at the concentration camp. Eva was never given the choice. Her guilt (Sophie's) was resolved with her death. She made the choice to commit suicide with Nathan who was a confirmed case of schizophrenic. Excellent narration that the book provides room for the reader to expand his/her imagination of the vastness of the holocaust.

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Summary: An haunting work that is more than pure Holocaust Fiction
Review: For those who have seen the film, this novel may seem perhaps a bit overwraught and wordy, but it behooves anyone to stick with it. Stryon writes eloquently and harshly (moreso towards the end) and successfully evokes the hardships suffered by Sophie, a Polish survivor, Nathan, her Jewish lover, and Stingo, an aspiring writer from the South. It's tempting to call this genre fiction (ie Holocaust Literature) -- a category it certainly fits -- but the work is more than that. In its course it considers race, religion, American identity, memory and guilt, to name a few of many themes. Its brutality (and increasingly compelling storyline) should propel any reader through the more dense sections. The film gives perhaps a more succinct rendering, but Styron's final tragic evocation of Sophie (in Auschwitz, in Brooklyn) was meant as much for words as camera. Like the pre-Raphaelite Meryl Streep who stares out at us in the eerie moments after the film's close, this book will stay with you for quite some time; if you don't cry, I doubt any other novel (in part of whole) could make you weep.

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Summary: A look at the Holocaust from an unfamiliar point of view
Review: One of the best looks at how the Nazi Holocaust destroyed the lives of 11 million people, almost half of whom were not Jewish. The choice(s) that Sophie makes will shock the uninitiated in Holocaust literature, though you would be well advised to keep in mind that such choices were made on a daily basis by those who survived the madness of World War II. A haunting, disturbing work that will stay with the reader for a lifetime.

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Summary: A story of heart-rending decision and survival.
Review: After reading this book, it is difficult to remember that William Styron is male and from Virginia and isn't Jewish. His portrayal of Sophie, an Eastern European Jew, is biting and emotion-packed. No other novel by an author who has not been in a concentration camp comes close to portraying the psychological scars left by the Holocaust as accurately as Mr. Styron. However, this book is not specific to the Jewish experience, as it was not written by a Jew. It tells the tale of the painful decisions that we must all make at various points in our lives. William Styron has created a masterpiece of human emotion which will continue to be read throughout the years as a story of the Holocaust and of life in general

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Summary: Earth shattering
Review: I've only read one other book that was as jaw-dropping and mind blowing as this one, and that was THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD with its themes of child abuse, southernisms, and deparvity. SOPHIE'S CHOICE is equally as shocking, and even better written. One thing noteworthy about William Styron is his skill with the English language. He weaves together sentences and paragraphs that alone could convey the reader on a joyful voyage. But when you combine his beautiful prose with this sad tale, you get a near magnum opus. Having children myself, I felt the deepest sense of tragedy. It stirred those tender feelings deep inside me, feelings that I thought had been perpetually dormant. Lastly, the novel was effective at teaching a westerner like me about the long-standing antagonism between the north and south, between rebel and yankee. Highly recommended book! If you read only one William Styron book, read this one for goodness sake.

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Summary: Read the Best
Review: Styron is the best, in my opinion. One is drawn into each character he paints and feels her/his pain to such a degree that it is nearly unbearable. This is one book where I had to keep the dictionary at my side--my vocabulary is weak stacked against Styron's, though I never felt he was flaunting his gift. It has been years since I read this masterpiece, but it remains at the top of my list of finest reads. Read the book, forget about the movie--even Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline cannot do this justice.

Styron's Darkness Visible (his memoir of his personal experience with clinical depression) should be handed out to all who are faced with this dark and scary journey--it is a life-line, a ray-of-hope, when one feels as though she is drowning in despair. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and only a person who has been there knows this.


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Summary: One of my favorites
Review: A chilling depiction of how the Holocaust's reign of terror extended far beyond life in concentration camps. Sophie's abusive relationship with Nathan and her inability to leave him are the result of her abuse at the hands of Nazi Germany. While reading I thought that her 'choice' would be to choose either Stingo or Nathan.....although that indeed was a choice of hers, when I read of what her real 'choice' was I was shocked. Not an uplifting book, but powerful and worth reading. Additionally, I have never seen such a vast use of diction in a novel. The wide vocabulary usage was far above anything I had read previously.

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Summary: Incomprehensible evil
Review: William Styron's Sophie's Choice presents the most awful choice a parent could ever make. Why that choice had to be made, and why Stingo, the man relating the story, cannot forget Sophie, is the driving force behind this uncompromising and fateful story. The idea will give you pause even before you have read the novel, and the memory of the choice will make you sad for as long as you remember this book.