A difficult read, especially with how thin the veil is between "Sophie" and Taubes. It comes together as a portrait of a derealized self, in both plot and structure. "Sophie" is persecuted in every possible way; she emigrates from Hungary in the late 30s as a Jew, a psychoanalytical father tries to impose order and (a misplaced) rationale to her behavior, she faces an abusive husband (Jacob Taubes) and marital problems in both her own marriage and that of her parents, etc.

She's barraged by questions that she can't answer, from her family and her children and her own internal monologue. This comes across in different ways; a section is written as a surreal screenplay of a trial after her death, another is a chaotic, rapid dialogue with her children. Some sections have a terse, tense, austere writing style, where each brief sentence or thought seems hurried. Others (as with the tracing of her familial lineage) are more languid and conventional, but no less distraught.

Towards the end, there's a more sober analysis of her situation. She writes of "a second mind [that] liked to appear and vanish and change" and faces "pictures in her mind which didn't apply." In one section, she judges the unwell patients that visit her father, with the implication that she'd go on to internalize that judgment when she herself grew to face these things.

The changes in writing style and structure (and lens, from sober to surreal and back) could be an extension of these different "selves" on Taubes' part. Just as "Sophie" has trouble with self-actualization, the writing searches in different voices without settling on one that is her/its own. It suits the material and further entangles "Sophie" and Taubes in an honest, starkly vulnerable text.