Estimated Reading Time 1 Minutes
Publisher: Fawcett (April 12, 1987)
Paperback : 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0449213445
Thoughts: The Chosen is near the top of the list of my all-time favorite books. It’s a platonic love story of two best friends who find each other during turbulent times. It’s academic, scholarly, and makes you appreciate the joy and significance of learning. It deals with difficult family relationships, a rich cultural heritage, and trying to find a place where you belong.
First sentence: For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other’s existence.
Favorite Quote From the Book: A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.
Summary from Amazon.com:
Few stories offer more warmth, wisdom, or generosity than this tale of two boys, their fathers, their friendship, and the chaotic times in which they live. Though on the surface it explores religious faith–the intellectually committed as well as the passionately observant–the struggles addressed in The Chosen are familiar to families of all faiths and in all nations.
In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.
(This is not a conventional children’s book, although it will move any wise child age 12 or older, and often appears on summer reading lists for high school students.)
