A review by tittypete
Sophie's Choice by William Styron

5.0

My stepdad gave me this book a long time ago and I avoided reading it until just now. I figured I knew what it was about, a sad woman who had to choose which of her two children got to live during the holocaust. Personally I'm a little holocausted out and just didn't want to dig into 500+ page sack of sadness. Well I was mistaken. Because Sophie's choice takes an underlying, gut-punchingly sad holocaust theme and dips it in a vat of jizz. There's a lot fucking and coming and b-jobs and earthy-yet-briny vaginas and sleep-groping and piss-drinking and fun stuff to make the holocaust stuff even weirder. Sophie's choice is partially about fucking the pain away but also a glimpse at a much more complicated version of the typical super sad holocaust story. For one thing, Sophie was an anti-semitic Catholic. Not your typical victim in stories of the time. Anne Frank she is not. Her diary is not edited and she doesn't always inspire the pity we're supposed to have for the typical victims of the nazis. She's both fantastically and repugnantly human. There's so many layers to this book I'm not even getting into Nathan the nutjob or the MAIN character (with the worst name ever) who's internal reflections carry the bulk of the narrative. It's heavy but it swims, moves, chugs along. Left me feeling dirty and conflicted. Like a holocaust boner. It's gonna be weird to talk about it with my stepdad.

Always,

Mitchell

PS: Hetzjagd auf nazis.