Well this certainly was a long and hard read. It took me ages to get through it really did, and usually I'm quite a fast reader.
I'm not entirely sure where to start. The narrator, and I suppose the main character of this book, is a young twenty two year old man named Stingo. How to describe Stingo... In three words I would say that Stingo is self obsessed, horny and madly in love with Sophie.
I didn't like Stingo very much, which was fairly annoying seeing as he was the one telling the whole story, the story being the one of the relationship between Sophie and her boyfriend Nathan in the year 1947, just after the war. And they don't exactly have a stable and easygoing relationship that's for certain.
He also tells us of Sophie's life in Auschwitz during the war.
Stingo meets Sophie and Nathan when he takes lodgings in a home in Brooklyn. Nathan is an American Jew and Sophie is a Polish Catholic who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz.
Throughout the entire book you follow Stingo slowly unravelling the secrets of Sophie's past. At first it seems like there is not much to discover, she only says that she survived. But more Stingo gets to know Sophie, and the closer he gets to her the more he, and through him we, realise just how much she went through, and what terrible thinks she's rather no one ever knew. You have to go through all of her lies and half truths before you finally get to the truth.
All that plus the actual present relationship of Nathan and Sophie as I said before. Nathan is quite deranged and Sophie is completely devoted and infatuated with him. So you can see how that might not exactly be a healthy relationship.
I don't know. It's a good book, the story is sad but well written. My only actual problem is that I really disliked Stingo. Other than that I have no real complaints.
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