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kirsten0929 's review for:
The Chosen
by Chaim Potok
[1967] Notes to self…was hoping to like it as much as I loved My Name is Asher Lev. Unfortunately I found that it read like a young adult novel as it was told primarily from the perspective of a fifteen year old boy. The issues were interesting, a son breaking from the expectations of his father, religion versus culture, conflicting beliefs of Orthodox vs Hasidic views of Judaism and the like, but the analysis lacked the nuance and insight that would have been available to the author had he made the narrator the adult Reuven looking back on his life. Also much of it felt like an educational text disguised as a novel. It was interesting but only an okay reading experience for me, as I was looking for the edge and maturity of writing that was in Asher Lev. In this one the edges had been rounded off and the writing was more simplistic. But as his first novel, I see it as good training ground for what he was able to do with Asher Lev.