Book Review (may contain spoilers!)

I have just read Chaim Potok's 'Old Men at Midnight Night'. (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2001)., and   I thought that I'd like to post a review of it. So now after my essays are done here it is. Please not although I will try and keep spoilers to a minimum there still might be some, so please don't read if you haven't read Old Men at Midnight and intend to do so.

Chaim Potok is probably my favourite author, and certainly the Chosen is my favourite novel so I was please to find a Potok novel that I was yet to read.  Structurally Old Men at Midnight, is formed out of three loosely interconnected novellas each centred around the 'heroin' Davita. Any Potok fan will recognise many of the themes and tropes of the whole novel and of the individual novellas.  However they are refreshingly new, there is not a central theme of religious crisis. And the hero is female, although she takes a back seat to the three men whose stories she hears (and creates?).

The first story the Ark builder, is the most recognisably Potokian. Set in post war New York: Brown stone houses, hassidic vs. non-hasidic orthodoxy yiddish culture meets America.  In this story, Divita (the a Teenager) teaches English to a Holocaust survivor, who slow opens up to her and tells his story. Themes are: Memory, survival, evil, the holocaust, art and the cathartic power of stories and story telling.
There are many links here with Potok's other works, although cultural back grounds were somewhat different.
1st person Divita.

The Second story 'The War Doctor' a defector from Stalin's Russia recounts, in letter form his actives during the war and as an officer in KGB. Again there are links to some of Potok's other works: Notably  'My Name is Asher Lev', and 'The gift of Asher Lev'.
Themes are: Memory, Totalitarianism, Russia, Academic, Evil, and again the Power of Story telling.
Complex: Short intro third person, then first person from perspective of KGB officer.

Third Story: 'The Trope teacher', an academic of war, writes about the author who moves in next door. She (Davita) engages him in conversation and draws out his, story (Holocaust related again). This story is highly symbolic and resonant with pain and lose.
Themes: Memory, lose, evil, academics. The power of stories and the negtive power of silence.
first person: the academic.

My ideas:
Only the first story is 'genuine', the other two are stories written by the writer herself. (So stories within stories).  There is a progression from the more simply narrative-though to the highly symbolic and complex final story. As time moves (40's, 50's and 90's).

I would say that this is most literary of Potok's novels and not necessarily the most straightforwardly readable. It is nevertheless very enjoyable and in fact readable if you are prepared to give it time.
I would advice that maybe start with another of his other works and built towards this more technically challenging texts such as this and 'In the Beginning'.