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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
I disagree with opinions that this book is boring. It is hard to read this book and you won’t read it in a few days, that’s true. I read this book almost 4 months, just when I was in mood for it. At first this book is not written from Sophie’s view. It’s more about young writter Stingo, who just met Sophie and Nathan. And they are not his entire world, he thinks about other things as well. There is a lot of pages which are not important for the main story, but without them it wouldn’t be so perfect book. It’s great opportunity to understand main characters actions, this story is mainly about consequences which war left in people’s souls. It’s also about racism in USA against black people, about living with mental disorders, with guilt, about young people, about sexuality and many others. If you want just story about holocaust, I recommend you to read something else. But choose this book if you are looking for something little bit different then the rest of books about war or if you want to know what was after that. And in my opinion, it was as much hard as during the war or in concentration camps. People have made many bad decisions during the war to save their lives. And then they had to learn how to live with them.
challenging
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So long, sense of innocence and safety. It was nice while it lasted.
Did not like.
What a load of nonsense. It took me three months to read this book and I was only really interested in the relationship between Sophie and Nathan.
What a load of nonsense. It took me three months to read this book and I was only really interested in the relationship between Sophie and Nathan.
I watched the movie a long time ago~ the book was good, but i wasnt into the narrator. But that is personal preference, whenever a narrator is in an author the prose are always pretentious and over writen.
Maybe about halfway through the book it becomes clear how the narrative was constructed, carefully parcelling out the details of Sophie's story, presumably so that it can last long enough to tell Stingo's tale. Stingo himself is the real focus of the book, which is a shame because he's little more than a less debased Philip Roth hero and not especially interesting or easy to empathize with, while the Sophie story is strong enough that it could have stood on its own. I think the best thing I could say is that the book tries really hard. It's even successful, in some ways, but you can feel the strain.
One star deducted for the narrator, who I found stilted and fairly one dimensional.
Now that that's out of the way, WHAT A BOOK! I mean, I knew what the story was, I knew what was going to happen, the big reveal at the end (and all the little reveals in between) were not at all unexpected, and even then, it blew my mind. Every single time. I have never come across a Holocaust-survivor story told so poignantly, and with so much empathy. The characters are brilliant, the story unfolds slowly, pulling you into the narrator's world gradually, but completely, and delivers the blows in quick succession - neat, quick hits that follow each other with such precision that you have to stop and catch your breath midway. The writing is beautiful, and adds a simplicity to the complex characters... I honestly have just the one complaint about the book - that Stingo was a bit too much of an innocent Southern stereotype, and I wish there was more character to him. Other than that, bravo!
Now that that's out of the way, WHAT A BOOK! I mean, I knew what the story was, I knew what was going to happen, the big reveal at the end (and all the little reveals in between) were not at all unexpected, and even then, it blew my mind. Every single time. I have never come across a Holocaust-survivor story told so poignantly, and with so much empathy. The characters are brilliant, the story unfolds slowly, pulling you into the narrator's world gradually, but completely, and delivers the blows in quick succession - neat, quick hits that follow each other with such precision that you have to stop and catch your breath midway. The writing is beautiful, and adds a simplicity to the complex characters... I honestly have just the one complaint about the book - that Stingo was a bit too much of an innocent Southern stereotype, and I wish there was more character to him. Other than that, bravo!
This book took me a long time to finish, but it was a powerful read.