A moving story about the life of David Lurie, a Jewish boy growing up in New York. Due to an accident suffered as an infant, chronic illness often confines David to his bed which leads to an over-active imagination and a love for reading. As his family survives the great depression, racism, then the loss of their family to Hitler's camps, David becomes a renowned scholar of the Jewish faith. I probably would have liked the book more without having to wade through the tedious religious debates throughout the book, but the writing is beautiful and thought-provoking. ( )

This superbly written novel of the intellectual-and emotional awakening of young David Lurie brings to glowing reality the rich texture of Jewish family life in America, from the Twenties through the shadows of the Depression and World War II.
Even those too young to have lived it will know
how was, For the rest, it will recapture an un•
forgettable moment of the past with breathtaking
immediacy.

I really really wanted to be pulled into this book, and I tried, but try as I might, I had to fight merely to finish skimming to the end of the novel, which I certainly found interesting in a distant sort of way, but I simply could not identify with the protagonist, I suppose. ( )

I really really wanted to be pulled into this book, and I tried, but try as I might, I had to fight merely to finish skimming to the end of the novel, which I certainly found interesting in a distant sort of way, but I simply could not identify with the protagonist, I suppose. ( )

Last read a Chaim Potok book aged 14...43 years on I read another and it's FABULOUS writing, up there with Roth's 'Radetzky March' as my best reads of the year.
This is an impression of the Jewish experience of the early 20th century...but not from a European perspective. The young narrator is living a relatively OK life in New York. But the whole book is filled with a sense of menace, as the child encounters snatches of adult conversation; a photo of his father and friends in a Polish forest with guns; mother fearing for her family back in Poland and the anguish as their efforts to persuade them to leave are rebuffed; the narrator's uncle and namesake who was killed in a pogrom...and closer to home, casual racist bullying, the Depression which impacts on the community's ability to help their compatriots. And the fearful news from Europe...

David Lurie is the sickly but academically brilliant son of Polish Jewish emigres. His father helps run an organisation dedicated to helping Polish Jews start a new life in the States. But the family history forms a big part of the child's experience: the frequent family trips to the wooded Bronx zoo overlay the images of the Jewish resistance in the Polish forest; and as his search for religious truth lead him to a secular university rather than the yeshiva, a sense of betraying his roots...

Utterly brilliant writing, 100% recommended! ( )