Sophie's Choice
William Styron, 1979
★ 4.16 from 95.8k ratings on Goodreads
A young Southern editor in 1947 New York rooms with a Polish survivor and her lover, and learns how history can live inside a love affair. Memory, love and moral dread press through a slow, lyrical narration that keeps shifting between present rooms and past horrors.
Feels like dread, longing and tenderness. About memory, love and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy unhurried, voice-driven novels where a love affair carries the weight of history. Be warned that some readers find the narrator's sexual digressions and the book's length frustrating.
Why read it
It lets you see how a love affair can hold the moral weight of history, and how memory keeps reshaping what people can bear.
A page from the book
The cheapest way to keep loneliness at bay, one warm beer at a time.
So during those months my evening schedule rarely varied. Leaving the McGraw-Hill Building at five, I would take the Eighth Avenue subway train (a nickel) to Village Square, where, after debarking, I made straight for a corner delicatessen and bought the three cans of Rheingold my severe and budgetary conscience permitted me. Thence to my roomlet, where I would stretch out on the corrugated mattress with its Clorox-fragrant sheets laundered to transparency and read until the last of my beers grew warm—a matter of an hour and a half or so. Mercifully, I was at that 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. What readers say
Readers are divided: many find the novel deeply moving and heartbreaking, especially Sophie’s Holocaust past and impossible choices, while others are frustrated by the narrator’s sexual digressions, length, and manipulative flashbacks.
William Styron.Styron won the 1980 National Book Award for this novel; Meryl Streep's performance in the 1982 film won an Oscar.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Sophie's Choice for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy unhurried, voice-driven novels where a love affair carries the weight of history. Be warned that some readers find the narrator's sexual digressions and the book's length frustrating.
- What is Sophie's Choice like?
- Memory, love and moral dread press through a slow, lyrical narration that keeps shifting between present rooms and past horrors. Feels like dread, longing and tenderness. About memory, love and morality.
- What should I read after Sophie's Choice?
- If you liked Sophie's Choice, try Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami), The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) and The Book Thief (Markus Zusak).
A taste of the feed
The case for a small life, made by a man who has lived one.
I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
The Notebook · Nicholas Sparks
The voice that will carry you away is more polite than you'd expect.
I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
The Book Thief · Markus Zusak
What it feels like to be certain of something that could kill you.
About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn’t know how potent that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.
Twilight · Stephenie Meyer
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