In some ways, Chava and Ahmad, the main characters in Helene
Wecker’s “The Golem and the Jinni” ($15.99, Harper Perennial), are not all that
different from the thousands of immigrants that surround them in
turn-of-the-century New York. As the title tells us, though, they’re far from
the average immigrant.
Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay. She traveled to New
York from Poland with her would-be husband, a ne’er-do-well merchant who,
unable and unwilling to find a real-world woman, enlisted the help of a
disgraced rabbi who doesn’t mind meddling in the dark arts for the right price.
Unlike most golems, which are little more than mindless slaves, Chava’s master
wanted her to have intelligence and curiosity. She was packed away on a ship to
be awakened when they arrived in New York. Unable to wait, her master awakens
her on the voyage, then dies, leaving her rudderless, a babe in a new world.
She soon finds an ally, a kindly old rabbi named Avram
Meyer, who recognizes her nature and takes her in while trying to decide
whether the best way to help her is to teach her how to live or destroy her.
Ahmad is a jinni, trapped in a flask for centuries by an
ancient wizard until he is accidentally released by a Syrian tinsmith, Arbeely,
who is repairing the vessel. Arbeely takes the jinni on as an apprentice
because of his powers and his unique talents with metal, but trapped in human
form by the unbreakable iron bracelet clamped around his wrist, he wanders the
streets of New York at night, longing for the freedom that he had in his desert
home.
The two meet by chance and immediately recognize each other’s
“otherness.” Slowly, they form a bond, never knowing that they’re more deeply
connected than they realize.
After seeing this book on top of several best of 2013 lists,
I decided to give it a shot, though I was initially unsure from the
descriptions. It was quite a different book than I expected. While a great many
of the reviews and summaries I read focused on the historical aspect, the
fantasy elements are obviously front and center and ever-present. That said, “The
Golem and the Jinni” does provide a glimpse into what life might have been like
for those many immigrants that arrived at Ellis Island seeking a better life
for themselves and their families. We get a look at the fairly tight-knit and
ethically segregated neighborhoods where they settled, and even a taste of some
of the prejudices of the time, though Wecker doesn’t dwell on those.
Just as interesting, though, are the rooftop worlds that the
jinni often travels through that despite their grounding in history seem like
something more out of a thieves’ tale sort of novel.
Despite that otherness and their foibles, Wecker manages to
create a pair of nonhuman characters that the reader comes to care deeply about,
even when they do some things that are not so nice. In fact, the golem and the
jinni become much more relatable than some of the human characters in the book
to me.
The beauty, though, of “The Golem and the jinni” is in the
fact that it’s a story as unique as those two characters. It’s that rare book
which really reminds me of nothing that I’ve ever read before. It’s part
historical, part lesson on a couple of rarely used mythologies and, yes, even a
small part romance. At the same time, though, it’s all fantasy, with every bit
of the wonder and magic you’d expect from the genre. I’m not sure that it’s the
best book that I read from the 2013 catalog, but I concur with the critics who
put it at or near the top of their lists that it certainly deserves to be in
the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment