2006 book 135

William Styron's Sophie's Choice
Oh my god, can you believe I'd never read this?? I think I figured there wasn't a point, having gleaned what Sophie's choice was through my endless absorption of pop culture knowledge. Anyway, this book predominantly isn't about the titular character's experiences in Auschwitz, but her largely platonic relationship with the young Southern Duke alum wannabe writer of a narrator, whose desperate quest to get laid in 1947 encapsulates way too much of the story. Her troubled Jewish boyfriend is also a large part of the picture. Interestingly, I know I wrote recently that Holocaust stories often seem like a calculated attempt to tug at heartstrings, but Sophie's experiences really were not portrayed as powerfully as they could have been--whether as a result of the narrator's self-obsession and inability to understand, or due to Styron's own choices as a writer. Either way, I'm giving it a B. It'd have been graded higher if it wasn't so friggin' long. Was Styron too famous to receive editorial guidance at the time he wrote it, or were descriptions of the narrator's sexual frustrations in vogue at the time? My reaction to these was often, "Oh, shut UP already, and get to the part where Sophie makes a choice!" (at which point, the choice was surprisingly anti-climactic).