After her creator dies en route to America, Chava, a golem from a Polish shtetl, must navigate the streets of 1899 New York City by herself -- her only ally is a rabbi unsure whether to destroy her, or allow her to fulfill her destiny as the harbinger of destruction. Ahmad, a jinni from Syria's deserts has been released from his thousand-year-old glass bottle by a tinsmith but has little intention of remaining a metalworker, despite his uncanny talent for it. Chava and Ahmad meet and discover that they're soul mates, but a dangerous adversary threatens their future. This vibrant blend of myth, adventure, and romance will enchant fans of stories based on folklore.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker centers itself in New York City as the 19th century prepares to turn into the 20th. It is a city of immigrants clustered into enclaves where they are surrounded by people familiar with the cultures of the homelands they have left, Little Italy and Chinatown and Irish neighborhoods. It is a city that is about to receive two very unusual immigrants.
In Little Syria, a tinsmith begins to repair an old copper flask and is shocked when a man appears laid out on the floor of his workroom wearing a cuff around his right wrist and asking about the wizard who has trapped him in human form. Meanwhile, on a ship crossing the Atlantic, a man wakes a clay woman who has been created to be his ideal wife, obedient, modest, and (in a request that surprised the man who made her) curious. He will soon die, leaving the new-born, master-less golem to hear the desires of everyone around her. Upon arriving on shore, she will be found by a rabbi who recognizes what she is and will help her begin to understand the world she has found herself in much the same way the tinsmith will help the jinni understand the strange city that has been built in the centuries he was trapped in the flask. These two inhuman beings in the midst of all this teeming humanity will eventually meet and nothing will ever be the same. For some, it will be deadly.
The narrative is non-linear, jumping back and forth from 1899 to the time leading up to the jinni’s capture to the history of the man who made the golem and back, revealing mysteries piece by piece. The focus is as much on the atmosphere of a world on the brink of change as it is on the inner lives of the two leads of the title. Those lives come to link together in intricate and uncanny ways that left me hungering to pick up the sequel, The Hidden Palace, which has recently been released.
Availability: Book; eBook in cloudLibrary Rating: **** Stars (I really liked it) Reviewer: Catherine, Cataloging Librarian
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AWARDS: Mythopoeic Award: Adult Literature
GENRE: Historical Fantasy; Middle Eastern-Influenced Fantasy THEME: Hidden Among Us (There's a whole world within the world -- under the floorboards, down an alley, maybe deep in the woods. Most humans never know they're there.); Last of Their Kind (The heroes are all that remain of their people, or so they think. ) TONE: Atmospheric; Mystical STORYLINE: Intricately Plotted; Nonlinear WRITING STYLE: Lyrical; Stylistically Complex
CHARACTER: Culturally Diverse; Religiously Diverse; Well-Developed
TIME PERIOD: 1890s; Gilded Age (1865-1898) LOCATION: New York City
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