The Chosen

By -
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

A newly-formed book club I'm joining picked The Chosen as one of the first books we'll read.  I was happy, because it's on my CC list even though I know just about nothing about Chaim Potok.  When I started it, and it spends 30 pages on a baseball game, I was pretty trepidatious about the whole thing, but my husband said he had really liked it in high school, so I kept reading and pretty soon I was hooked.  I really enjoyed this book a lot.

The story starts in 1944, just as D-Day and the invasion of Europe is starting.  It's narrated by Reuven, an Orthodox Jewish teenage boy--he meets up with Danny, who seems at first to be destined to be his arch-enemy.  Danny is Hasidic, and a baseball game between their two teams turns ugly.  Reuven winds up in the hospital, and that's where he and Danny begin a friendship that they both need--but Danny most of all.

The amount of studying these boys do is phenomenal.  They both work really hard all the time at their studies, and Danny is a true genius.  His future is completely mapped out for him; as the older son of his community's leader, he is expected to take his father's place.  Reuven, however, cannot understand Danny's relationship with his father at all.  Reuven and his own father are very close--they study and talk together all the time--and in some ways Reuven's father takes on that role with Danny, too.  Then, as news of the Holocaust begins to come out of Europe, and the Zionist movement gains momentum, things get more complicated.

This is a truly great novel about fathers and sons and love.  And, unlike much of the material I've been reading recently, it was not unremittingly tragic!  So that was nice for me.  I would really like to read more Potok now, and I'm happy to have found a new author to love.  Book club is tonight!


I have lots more books to tell you about, and I'm still enjoying In the First Circle too, so more posts soon.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 28, 2013 at 5:01 PM

    GOD I love this book. Every time I pick it up to read bits of (like when I need something to read while I'm brushing my teeth), I end up being drawn in and reading the whole thing. It's so good. I have loved it more and more as I've reread it time after time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jennifer BardsleyJune 29, 2013 at 11:33 PM

    I know I've read this, but it was a while ago. Is this the one where he goes on to serve in the Korean war as a Jewish/chaplain and has a hard time being kosher? Or is this the one where he's actually a really good painter, and his dad doesn't know what to make of it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanJune 30, 2013 at 7:50 AM

    Sounds like you're thinking of the sequel, The Promise. Which I need to get and read! I'm betting on the chaplain option, but I don't know.

    In this story, they're both teenagers--Reuven is a mathy kid and Danny is into psychology.

    ReplyDelete
  4. amanda @ simplerpastimesJune 30, 2013 at 3:45 PM

    I read this one as required summer reading in high school, and while I don't recall much about it, I do know that I enjoyed it so much that I read a bunch of other of Potok's book. I'm not familiar with the Korean war chaplain one Jenny mentions, but the story about the artist is My Name is Asher Lev. Whichever you pick up next, I hope you enjoy!

    ReplyDelete
  5. JennyJuly 1, 2013 at 3:21 PM

    Thanks Amanda. If I only could remember half of what I've forgotten...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more