Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy

Getting a teenager hooked on to ideas of Philosophy, that too diligently wanting to follow its steady arc chronologically, is always going to be an uphill task. But not if you believe in the imaginative power of ideas yourself; certainly not if you figure an ingenious way out to break away from the classroom tediousness, to take those ideas with you and sail across in a boat ride, and then to hold them back just enough until you start again, and even more so if you know how to get dogs deliver them mail for you.

Sophie's World is a fresh way to look at the history of thoughts thought by the most genius minds over the millennia. The innovation in telling the history enjoins the imagination of telling a story; the story of Sophie Amundsen who, could it be argued, is more real than her real counterpart.

The coming of age for Sophie involves the creative play of splitting or rather multiplying her self ... to evolve into her indubitable double. Is it Hilde reading Sophie or the other way round, turned frantically over the pages, truly amounts to the best bits of the book. The postmodernist blend of fiction and history enables the flight of philosophy which the readers, much like Sophie, would be comfortable to take.
About the ‘philosophy' as such, it would be better to hark as much at those other counterparts of the Western world. That the narration jars towards the final scenes is probably an outcome of the literary pull of closing down the circle that deserves to start all over again.
One cannot complain much albeit when at your helm is a girl who knows what is she dealing with and who is firmly taking steps to affirm her journey.