“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.”Humor, Brooklyn, mental illness, eroticism, and the Holocaust. Sounds like an unlikely concoction for a novel, doesn’t it? This was totally unexpected! The only knowledge I had going into this is th...

I should probably begin by stating that my copy of Sophie's Choice has taken up residence under my stairs, in a plastic box, next to where all of the other dire books I have been unfortunate enough to read, are currently residing too, until I am able to donate them to the book farm, or anywhere apart from under my roof. This book took me way too long to read than I'm happy with, and the sole reason for that is;It was a terrible book. I had been aching to get to this book, and after reading the i...

”Mercifully, I was at the age when reading was still a passion and thus, save for a happy marriage, the best state possible in which to keep absolute loneliness at bay. I could not have made it through those evenings otherwise. But I was an abandoned reader and, besides, outlandishly eclectic, with an affinity for the written word--almost any written word--that was so excitable that it verged on the erotic. I mean this literally, and were it not for the fact that I have compared notes with a few...

«Η επιλογή της Σόφι» είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό υπέραριστούργημα, μια εκθαμβωτική απεικόνιση της λυρικής και ισχυρής γραφής, σε συνδυασμό με μια εξίσου εκθαμβωτική παρουσίαση μιας βαθιάς και συμπονετικής κατανόησης της ανθρώπινης καρδιάς, στα θεμέλια της οποίας θάβεται και στοιχειώνει την ύπαρξη, η αύρα της ψυχής. Υπέροχο, πραγματικά, απερίσπαστα συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο, απο αυτά που δεν ξεχνάς ποτέ, απο αυτά που αγαπάς κάθε σελίδα ξεχωριστά. Πως κατάφερε ο Styron να υφάνει όλα αυτά τα νήματα στο υφάδι ...

We are like lutes once held by God.Being away from His warm bodyfully explains our constant yearning.--HafizI started Sophie's Choice in a busy hotel lobby, awaiting my visiting sister's arrival, having no idea I was going to be immediately introduced to a 22-year-old Southerner named Stingo and the first of his many erections.His erections? What?I went into this read almost “blind,” knowing only that the author, William Styron, received the Pulitzer for fiction in 1968 for The Confessions of Na...

The term “Sophie’s Choice,” which derives from a critical plot point in William Styron’s eponymous novel, has become a prominent American idiom. You’ve probably heard it in your daily life. It was the subject of a relatively well-received movie starring Meryl Streep. Certainly, you’ve come across it if you’re a fan of The Simpsons. (A Sophie’s Choice joke is the kicker to Season 10, Episode 5’s “When You Dish Upon a Star”). Despite its prevalence in the cultural landscape, I’m not going to assum...

The world seems to be made of triangles… Of love triangles… And the narrator is an apex of one of such triangles…There is truth and there are lies – and we walk the tortuous paths of our lives in between.Perhaps I should say she indulged in certain evasions which at the time were necessary in order for her to retain her composure. Or maybe her sanity. I certainly don’t accuse her, for from the point of view of hindsight her untruths seem fathomable beyond need of apology.So it is with Sophie’s C...

Sophie's Choice: William Styron's Novel of Choices, Hobson's and OtherwiseThis novel was chosen by members of On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read for September, 2014. Sophie's Choice, First Ed., First Prtg., William Styron, Random House, New York, New York, 1979 The gate to Auschwitz, where those in charge choose who lives and who dies Life is but a series of choices, is it not? Some easy, quickly made, given no further thought. Others are more difficult. We worry about t...

It seems a lot of people have a problem with the prose being pretentious and overwritten. However, I had a big problem with the unfolding of the plot. This was a strange book for me because I really wanted to like it and even thought I liked it after I was finished. It took me about a week to think back and realize, Wait! That was a crappy book. Problem number 1: I personally found Sophie to be an unbeleivable character. I just thought she was not-fascinating and contradictory, like, not in the ...

William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" has to stand as one of the 20th century's great American novels. Based very loosely on his own experiences in the late 1940s in New York, Styron makes himself into a writer called Stingo who moves into a boarding house in Brooklyn, where he meets a Polish emigré named Sophie and her dangerously unpredictable lover, Nathan. With great delicacy and restraint, Styron traces the evolution of the friendship and love that entangles these three and which has stunning ...