Blog written by Sharon
This novel was written in 1979 and won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1980. Most of us have seen the movie starring Meryl Streep but many have forgotten the storyline so it was interesting to read the novel this time round.
We agree that the choice of the title is a clever one as it doesn't apply only to one choice that Sophie had to make, but rather several choices throughout the novel : between her children obviously, between Nathan and Stingo, between lying and telling the truth, between choosing to live or die...
I personally thought that Styron was clever to introduce slavery into a Holocaust story. He says : " It is important to regard Auschwitz as the recrudescence of slavery, the first in western civilisation since the American Civil war".
Which brings us to the many elaborate and complicated vocabulary throughout the book -- made me appreciate reading it on the Kindle with a built-in dictionary !!
Music is an important strain in the novel as are literary figures and works mentioned. In particular the poems of Emily Dickens and works of Tom Wolfe.
I thought that Styron was skilled at creating multi dimensional characters but may have portrayed the women in his novel skewed from a male's viewpoint.
The average rating of the book was 8/10 with quite a few 9s. It was described as "harrowing".
We agreed that it generated a lot of interesting discussions and points of view.
Our next book is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler and the meeting will take place at Sarah's on Wednesday May 20th ( instead of Thursday May 21st ).
Extraordinary journey of a story. Haunts me. I listened via audio cd's and was intensely immersed into the world of the book. Raised fantastic questions for discussion.
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