Review: "The Red Magician," by Lisa Goldstein

Though it was a National Book Award winner in 1983, the recent reissue of Lisa Goldstein’s “The Red Magician” ($7.99, Open Road Media) was my introduction to the tale.

Kicsi, a young Jewish girl living in Hungary during World War II, dreams of adventure and exotic locales. So she’s naturally taken with a strange, red-haired wanderer calling himself Voros who comes to town and is invited by her father to dine with the family. Voros has traveled the world, and Kicsi longs to hear about his adventures.

Voros gets on the bad side of the controlling local rabbi when he breaks a curse the rabbi has placed on Kicsi’s school because they teach classes in Hebrew and because of Voros’ attempts to warn the people of the town that disaster is coming.

The feud is the talk of the town, but the evil that’s about to descend on Kicsi’s family and friends will make the skirmish between the two magicians seem unimportant.

Review: "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helene Wecker

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.