Book Review! Sophie’s World

Mr. Gaarder scores big in this wonderful story!  Use it as a crash course in Western philosophy if you will.  Sophie is a young lady with a penchant for imagination and rational thinking.  One day, she finds herself in a world that looks much like her own, but she has received a message from an anonymous thinker, who is about to turn Sophie’s life upside down, bringing her to question what it is she knows to be true in life.  Eventually, the teacher makes himself known– but this disclosure doesn’t make Sophie’s understanding of life any more clear– instead, she must question the roots of truth.

In a clever turn, Sophie eventually discovers that she may not be a real person as she had previously expected.  Instead, she horrifyingly realizes that she might only be a character in a story.  This ironic tale twists and turns and fits perfectly along with the gradual changes that arise as new philosophers begin to think new and outrageous things about the nature of existence.

I was completely taken by Sophie’s World and I hated for it to be over.  While I had originally sat down to read this because it was an assigned reading in my Psychology class, I found myself lost within it and could not help reading the entire piece.   If there is any novel that should be cherished by new philosophers, this is it.