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Loading... Sophie's Choice (1979)by William Styron
   » 37 more Best Historical Fiction (191) 501 Must-Read Books (150) Favourite Books (367) Top Five Books of 2022 (113) A Novel Cure (184) Women in War (40) Books Read in 2023 (1,562) 1970s (130) Books That Made Me Cry (188) War Literature (70) AP Lit (150) No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. (  ) foof2you | Jun 17, 2023 |  didn't finish - tooo egocentric.... (  ) KindraP | Oct 8, 2022 | A bruisingly beautiful book that will leave you with questions about yourself and the nature of being human. A must read for every thinking human, even if through gritted teeth. (  ) SwatiRavi | Jun 27, 2022 | I'd like to read this book again. If I can take it...... ( ) bcrowl399 | Jun 28, 2020 | 20 years after reading this novel I am still thinking about it. Today I read a quote from Jean Vanier, of L'Arche, which illuminates one of the principal visual lessons which I carried away from the movie. Pretending We all want to turn away from anything that reveals the failure, pain, sickness and death beneath the brightly painted surface of our ordered lives. Civilization is, at least in part, about pretending that things are better than they are. We all want to be in a happy place, where everyone is nice and good and can fend for themselves. We shun our own weakness and the weakness of others. We refuse to listen to the cry of the needy. How easy it is to fall into the illusion of a beautiful world when we have lost trust in our capacity to make of our broken world a place that can become more beautiful. Jean Vanier Source: Becoming Human ( ) MaryHeleneMele | May 6, 2019 |
 Evoking a period just after the end of that War, the novel deals with themes so plangent and painful, particularly Sophie’s experiences in the Holocaust, that the book becomes an important meditation on the effects of war on the individual consciousness.  More than once in this smugly autobiographical novel, Styron pouts about how his last book, The Confessions of Nat Turner, drew accusations of exploitation, accusations that "I had turned to my own profit and advantage the miseries of slavery." And Sophie's Choice will probably draw similar accusations about Styron's use of the Holocaust: his new novel often seems to be a strong but skin-deep psychosexual melodrama that's been artificially heaped with import by making one of the characters--Sophie--a concentration-camp survivor. In "Sophie's Choice," his first novel in 11 years, you will participate in his greatest risks to date, both in structure and theme. Within the context of a single Brooklyn sum- mer, the summer of 1947, in which the autobiog- figure and narrator, Stingo, sets out to write the "dark Tidewater fable" that will be- come "Lie Down in Darkness," Styron will set himself the task of trying to understand what he calls "the central issue" of the 20th Century: the embodiment of evil that was Auschwitz. And how does a 22-year-old Southerner, just fired from his job as a junior editor at McGraw Hill, with literary aspirations and in robust health, connect even remotely with Auschwitz? In 1947? Is contained inContainsHas the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a studyHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:This award-winning novel of love, survival, and agonizing regret in postâ??WWII Brooklyn "belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces" (The Washington Post Book World). Winner of the National Book Award and a modern classic, Sophie's Choice centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist; Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor; and Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor who is Nathan's lover. Their entanglement in one another's lives will build to a stirring revelation of agonizing secrets that will change them forever. Poetic in its execution, and epic in its emotional sweep, Sophie's Choice explores the good and evil of humanity through Stingo's burgeoning worldliness, Nathan's volatile personality, and Sophie's tragic past. Mixing elements from Styron's own experience with themes of the Holocaust and the history of slavery in the American South, the novel is a profound and haunting human drama, representing Styron at the pinnacle of his literary brilliance. This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.12)
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