by Christopher Hitchens
|
by Bernhard Schlink
|
by Harper Lee
|
by Danny Scheinmann
|
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
|
See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Review
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. Her full name is Sophie Zawistowska, and she's the only other non-Jewish tenant in the Flatbush boarding house where narrator "Stingo," the young Styron, comes to attempt his first novel in 1947 after a brief nightmare as a reader at McGraw-Hill. Virtually virginal Stingo, of course, lusts like crazy after gorgeously 30-ish Sophie, but she is noisily, hotly in love with Nathan Landau, the brilliant, erratic biologist who nursed immigrant Sophie back to health after meeting her in the library. Soon Nathan, Sophie, and Stingo are a bouncy threesome, smiling together through Coney Island picnics or suffering together whenever Nathan has one of his irrational, jealous, abusive fits. And Sophie begins to reveal to Stingo, layer by layer, her guilty secrets: how she was both victim and accomplice at Auschwitz, playing the role of anti-Semite to ingratiate herself with officials; how she was willing to use her body to gain advantages; how she was forced to choose which of her two young children would die in the gas chamber. These reminiscences give Styron an opportunity to expound on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and to give the novel an ostensible unity: "Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the worM." But Sophie's death - a suicide pact with Nathan (who's soon exposed as a certifiable lunatic) after a brief but elaborate roll in the hay with Stingo - is only tenuously linked to the evil of Auschwitz; it's more in the good old Southern-gothic tradition. And when Styron tells us that Stingo has learned through Sophie about "death, and pain, and loss, and the appalling enigma of human existence," the pomposity seems unsupported, unearned by Stingo/Styron. Lesser problems too: the clumsy narrative shifts in the Auschwitz flashbacks, the impossibly ornate dialogue, the self-dramatizing, the diminishing returns of Styron's "encyclopedic ability to run on and on about a subject." Still, with all that said, Styron is a born writer, and when he's just storytelling - and not playing the dubious role of Great American Writer and Thinker - there's enough detailed, vigorous, sheer readability here to sustain even some of those readers bound to be turned off by the sticky contrivances and hollow pretentions. (Kirkus Reviews)
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. Her full name is Sophie Zawistowska, and she's the only other non-Jewish tenant in the Flatbush boarding house where narrator "Stingo," the young Styron, comes to attempt his first novel in 1947 after a brief nightmare as a reader at McGraw-Hill. Virtually virginal Stingo, of course, lusts like crazy after gorgeously 30-ish Sophie, but she is noisily, hotly in love with Nathan Landau, the brilliant, erratic biologist who nursed immigrant Sophie back to health after meeting her in the library. Soon Nathan, Sophie, and Stingo are a bouncy threesome, smiling together through Coney Island picnics or suffering together whenever Nathan has one of his irrational, jealous, abusive fits. And Sophie begins to reveal to Stingo, layer by layer, her guilty secrets: how she was both victim and accomplice at Auschwitz, playing the role of anti-Semite to ingratiate herself with officials; how she was willing to use her body to gain advantages; how she was forced to choose which of her two young children would die in the gas chamber. These reminiscences give Styron an opportunity to expound on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and to give the novel an ostensible unity: "Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the worM." But Sophie's death - a suicide pact with Nathan (who's soon exposed as a certifiable lunatic) after a brief but elaborate roll in the hay with Stingo - is only tenuously linked to the evil of Auschwitz; it's more in the good old Southern-gothic tradition. And when Styron tells us that Stingo has learned through Sophie about "death, and pain, and loss, and the appalling enigma of human existence," the pomposity seems unsupported, unearned by Stingo/Styron. Lesser problems too: the clumsy narrative shifts in the Auschwitz flashbacks, the impossibly ornate dialogue, the self-dramatizing, the diminishing returns of Styron's "encyclopedic ability to run on and on about a subject." Still, with all that said, Styron is a born writer, and when he's just storytelling - and not playing the dubious role of Great American Writer and Thinker - there's enough detailed, vigorous, sheer readability here to sustain even some of those readers bound to be turned off by the sticky contrivances and hollow pretentions. (Kirkus Reviews)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet. Create your own review
| |||
Video reviews
|
 |
Customer Discussions
Beta (What's this?)|
This product's forum
(0 discussions)
Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Active discussions in related forums
|
Related forums
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Styron, William
- Books > Fiction > By Period
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
Health & Beauty at Amazon.co.uk |
Beauty without the Beast |
Treat Someone
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). |
||||||||
| |||||
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
You have no recently viewed items or searches.
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers
| ||||
Amazon Home | |
| International Sites: United States | Germany | France | Japan | Canada | China | |
| Business Programs: Sell on Amazon | Fulfilment by Amazon | Join Associates | Join Advantage | |
| Customer Service | Help | View Basket | Your Account | |
| About Amazon.co.uk | Careers at Amazon | |
| Conditions of Use & Sale | Privacy Notice © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates |