Sophie's Choice

My book club read Sophie's Choice by William Styron this month.  It's a sad and depressing book.  Sophie's choice, in case you don't know, is a forced decision where all options are equally undesirable.  The first couple chapters are misleading because they're funny.  Several paragraphs are enough to make a reader laugh out loud.  The narrator, a young man nick-named Stingo is based on the author.  Stingo worked at a publishing house where he wrote quite funny rejection letters to authors.  Eventually he gets fired from his job because he doesn't wear a hat and he doesn't read the correct newspaper.   Sounds unbelievable?  Same thing happened to Styron. Truth is stranger than fiction.  Stingo meets two people at his boarding house, Sophie and Nathan.  Nathan is a person with paranoid schizophrenia and addiction issues.  Sophie is a woman from Poland who, although not Jewish, spent time in Auschwitz.  Both of these people have issues as Stingo learns early on.  As I read the story I mentally told Stingo, "Open your eyes!  Run for the hills!  Sophie and Nathan will bring you nothing but trouble."  Sophie and Nathan are chronic liars.  Most people in the book club believed that Sophie's latest version of the truth is the true truth.  I and one other person was not so sure about that.  So, like I said, this book about the Holocaust, mental illness, liars and addicts was not a "feel good" book in the least.  Interesting?  Yes.  Well written?  Yes. Best seller and award winning book?  Yes.  Just don't read too many sad ones in a row.