What Happened to Sophie Wilder

( 4 )

Overview

Charlie Blakeman is living in New York, on Washington Square, struggling to write his second novel and floundering, when his college love, Sophie Wilder, returns to his life. Sophie, too, is struggling, though Charlie isn’t sure why. They’ve spoken only rarely since falling out a decade before. Now Sophie begins to tell Charlie the story of her life since then, particularly the days she spent taking care of a dying man with his own terrible past and the difficult decision he presented her with. When Sophie once ...
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What Happened to Sophie Wilder

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More About This Book

Overview

Charlie Blakeman is living in New York, on Washington Square, struggling to write his second novel and floundering, when his college love, Sophie Wilder, returns to his life. Sophie, too, is struggling, though Charlie isn’t sure why. They’ve spoken only rarely since falling out a decade before. Now Sophie begins to tell Charlie the story of her life since then, particularly the days she spent taking care of a dying man with his own terrible past and the difficult decision he presented her with. When Sophie once again abruptly disappears, Charlie sets out to discover what happened to Sophie Wilder.
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Editorial Reviews

The Washington Post
…[a] beautiful, whip-smart first novel…Beha…is a precise, attentive and unshowy novelist. There are no symphonic sentences to quote in this review because his novel is constructed out of lines simple and functional as fence posts. Its power accrues over pages, as Charlie's fate intersects with Sophie's and Bill's. Beha announces the book's stylistic and emotional mission early on, when Sophie delivers a rant about the Beat writers. "There's no control, no sense of form," she complains. "Eventually it all turns sentimental, like a conversation with a sloppy drunk." Her critical opinion of the Beats is debatable, but What Happened to Sophie Wilder is the kind of novel she'd admire: sober, unsentimental and delivered with intelligence and passion.
—Mark Athitakis
Publishers Weekly
Beha’s debut novel (after the memoir The Whole Five Feet) is a thoughtful journey about the place of intellectual curiosity in relation to faith, friendship, and love. Charlie Blakeman is enamored of Sophie Wilder, fellow creative writing M.F.A. student. They spend hours talking, writing, and reading before Sophie decides she needs a break and disappears, for days or sometimes weeks, but always returning. Then, a betrayal causes a longer breach. Both Charlie and Sophie publish novels, but only Sophie’s is acclaimed. Struggles with their second books push Sophie toward Catholicism. When she drops back into Charlie’s life, he wants to pick up the pieces, whereas she has a hidden agenda. It’s difficult to empathize with Sophie, even when she’s trying to do the right thing, because she’s so blatantly indifferent to the harm she causes. The stories she tells are manipulated to make them better, and readers also see Sophie through the stories Charlie tells, raising the potent question: where does the real Sophie end and Charlie’s interpretation of her begin? Beha is smart enough to let the reader decide. Agent: Sarah Burnes, the Gernert Company. (June)
The New York Times Book Review
[Beha's] first novel, What Happened to Sophie Wilder, is about many things—the New York publishing world, the growing pains of post-collegiate life, the rigors of Roman Catholicism—but at its center it's a moving meditation on why and for whom we write.
—Sarah Towers
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781935639312
  • Publisher: Tin House Books
  • Publication date: 6/12/2012
  • Pages: 256
  • Sales rank: 89,701
  • Product dimensions: 4.50 (w) x 7.70 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Christopher R. Beha is an associate editor at Harper’s Magazine and the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet. He contributes frequently to the New York Times Book Review. What Happened to Sophie Wilder is his first novel.
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 4 )
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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 15, 2013

    Very highly recommended

    This beautifully written first novel has main characters you really care about and a compelling story that also raises important questions of faith, morality and religion. After reading this novel, I will go back and read this author's memoir. We read this in our bookgroup and the discussion was terrific.

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    Posted December 22, 2012

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    Posted September 28, 2012

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    Posted August 14, 2012

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