Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

Plot: Two teenage Jewish boys living in America in the 1940's form a friendship, even though they have different religions with different viewpoints and ideas. Together, they manage to grow in a somewhat claustrophobic environment, supporting one another through rough patches.

Comments: It took me forever to write those two sentences about The Chosen. It’s such a difficult story to describe. The author, Chaim Potok, I can’t imagine what was going through his head when he wrote it. Is it based on a story from his life? Did he dream it all up? However this story was written, it was written well. The way Chaim Potok writes is simple – though not easy – and I was able to make my through the whole book without much trouble. Unfortunately, I’m afraid most of the story went way over my head.

For one reason, I am not Jewish and I don’t know much about the religion, so all of the religious discussions were confusing for me and I couldn’t follow along very well. For another reason, the characters in the story were all so intelligent that any of the discussions not related to religion also went over my head. So I basically understood the things like at the beginning of the story when they are playing baseball, and towards the end of the story, when they go to college. I liked the characters and I appreciated the bits of plot I could process, but mostly I felt like a 1st grader reading a college textbook, so muddled and confusing everything was.

I definitely recommend this book for those that think they can manage it. It has good lessons weaved into the story, and it was absolutely an interesting and well-written story. But it’s not light-hearted reading and it isn’t easy to read, either – however fast I read through it (and I didn’t), if you actually understood the things Potok was writing about, you would get a lot out of The Chosen.

Rating: I can’t decide how to rate this, so I suggest you try reading it and decide this one for yourself.

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