Recently, I finished The Chosen written by Chaim Potok which I talked a little bit about in a previous newsletter. The Chosen is about Reuven Malter who is a Jew that lives in America. His life is fairly normal until a baseball accident sparks a new friendship and changes almost everything.
At first, I really enjoyed this book, and it was quite captivating because the plot line was very interesting. As the book went on though, it became more dull and not as exciting until the end of the book. The parts of the book that were interesting and fascinating, I really enjoyed, but the dull parts made me ready to put down the book. I think this all came down to expectations versus reality: where I thought the plot was going versus where it actually went. It wasn’t in a surprise ending/plot twist sort of way (because I would have liked that). No, the book was just completely different than I had expected from the first few chapters. The plot overall was just okay, but there were definitely great and very interesting parts to this book (like the beginning and the end). So, the middle section of the book was mostly just details that seemed a little unnecessary, and Chaim Potok could have made them more exciting. I will say, though, this book taught me a lot about Judaism, and being a religion I didn’t know much about, it was interesting to learn about their customs and how they live their lives as Jews. So, while I didn’t really enjoy the plot because it wasn’t very captivating or interesting, I appreciate how much I learned about Judaism through the writing of Chaim Potok in this book.
Overall, this book was just okay. If you want to read this book, I would say to read it more to learn about Judaism than to enjoy the story. You can purchase this book here on Amazon.