"Sophie--a clever and charming young woman--is trying to get out from under her mother's thumb. She's in love with her childhood friend Philip (pragmatic, attractive, a bit of a bore), but she often worries that she loves him too much for her own good, and that he might only be another thumb to crawl under. Both a sincere bildungsroman of Sophie's attempt to seize a life for her- self and a comic masterpiece with cutting observations and asides, The...