Review by New York Times Review
In Helene Wecker's first novel, two more than usually disoriented foreigners emerge onto the streets of 1899 New York. One is a golem, a clay woman fashioned near Danzig, then shipped across the ocean as the wife of a man who inconveniently dies on the voyage. The other is a jinni from the Syrian desert, trapped inside a copper flask until a hapless tin-smith sets him free during a routine repair. "It was ludicrous," thinks the surprised tinker. "Such things were only stories. But then, the only alternative was to conclude that he'd gone mad." There is in fact plenty of madness in this clever story, but the magic of it often makes more sense than the ways of the humans with whom the golem and the jinni now live. The creatures' folkloric natures are both powerful and vulnerable. The jinni, like all his kind, is made of fire; his natural enemies are water and iron, but most of all the wizard who enchanted him a thousand years ago. A Jewish magus made the golem docile, yet also strong enough to withstand almost anything except a secret incantation, which the kindly rabbi who finds her in the streets resolves to thwart. Both creatures have the potential to live forever. For both, the greatest challenge will be discovering their own distinct qualities and deciding how to use them. Early on, the still-confused golem tells her rabbi that she is beginning to understand the need for politeness. If everyone did as he or she pleased, she says, "it would be easier, at first. But then you might hurt each other to gain your wishes, and grow afraid of each other, and still go on wanting." That inescapable id-driven longing, and the simultaneous fight to conquer it in the name of civilization, make this novel embody both fire and earth, substance and spirit. History, magic and religion braid together in old New York's tenements while the lives of the widowed golem and the freed jinni unfold. Both are sleepless; both quickly find lodging and employment and receive names from the humans who accept their true natures - the golem is known as Chava, or "life"; the jinni is Ahmad. These relatively small moments open up into a languorous meditation-by-example on the nature of humanity, desire, conscience and free will. In the background is a crowded mosaic of other stories about the characters who surround Chava and Ahmad: Chava's gentle old rabbi, as well as an ice cream maker, a magus who left rabbinical studies for the dark arts, a long-dead Bedouin girl and a socialite enchanted by the jinni's heated seduction. The scheme neatly lends itself to allegory, contrasting several Old Worlds with the immigrant experience and its new class divisions. Most of the apparent digressions and lingering contemplations are eventually drawn into the entwined elements of the plot, but a reader can't be blamed for wishing the two main players would cross paths a bit sooner. We're a third of the way in before we encounter what filmmakers would call a "meet cute," and it's enchantingly described. In the still of the night, the golem is wandering, lost and lonely after her rabbi's death, when "a strange light appeared, seeming to float in midair. . . . She saw that it was not a light, but a face; and the face belonged to a man. . . . The rest of the world had fallen away. She had to know who he was. What he was." They recognize each other as, in fact, Other. "You're made of earth," he says. "And you're made of fire," she replies. These opposing characters are fundamentally alike, at least in their foreboding, and their interactions are described in some of the loveliest language in the book. But these two are. not meant to be together, at least not in the way we might expect. Nighttime loneliness leads to tentative companionship, yet the arrogant jinni still tarries with human women, while the golem frets over both his nature and her own - whether she will "pass" as human or do harm as something else. It's easy to sympathize with the golem. Conceived as a Stepford Wife or, more appropriately, an Angel in the Hovel, she is untethered without a master. The thoughts and desires of the strangers all around her flood her mind, activating both emotion and action. She harbors a full range of feelings, from embarrassment to anger, and, like other yearning women, she finds herself limited by circumstance. But human women may stand together; the golem is different. She has special powers, and soon she becomes terrified when an act of violence reveals her ability to take away life. "You must learn how to act according to what people say and do," the rabbi once cautioned her, "not what they wish or fear" - that is, impulse mus't be tempered by reason. In the rabbi's experience, golems can be biddable, but once they awaken to the taste for destruction they become unstoppable and must themselves be destroyed. Although he spends his last weeks on earth trying to find a way to keep his adopted clay daughter both alive and gentle, he dies with the spell that can preserve (but alter) her newly inked among his papers, her fate vulnerable to anyone who finds it. THE jinni, on the other hand, isn't troubled by his own drives. If the golem is a quintessentially submissive female, he is an über-rogue, member of a well-established race of amoral creatures who shapeshift, fly, enter human dreams, revel in wealth and flirt with risk. After such a long suspended existence in the flask's cramped quarters, he is ready to indulge all those impulses. He roams the city at night, hops rides on the Elevated and plays with the rain that threatens his fiery composition. To please the tinsmith, he does discipline himself to learn the tools of the trade, rather than using his own body heat to fix pots - but he prefers to fashion tiny gold or silver birds to leave as presents for a girl he kisses, a friend with whom he argues, a golem about whom he wants to know more. He's not the only man who fails, perhaps deliberately, to live up to his full intellectual or moral potential. The Jewish magus who made Chava is one example, having abandoned his studies of the kabbalah for manual labor and the dark arts. The ice cream vendor was once a brilliant doctor, and the old rabbi's nephew has disappointed his family by forgoing university studies in order to run a halfway house. Most of the men show a sort of pride antithetical to the golem's passive humility. And in time, danger lands on the door-step of the halfway house. A newly arrived immigrant, Joseph Schall - the magus who made the golem - insinuates himself into the system. He works efficiently, is a dab hand with the resident roster . . . and is looking for his creation. He's a man who wants to live forever, and he thinks she can help him. For good measure, he may as well suck the jinni into the plan. And so the threads of a magical web begin to be gathered together. The sometimes slow pace picks up considerably as the disparate characters decipher the past and try to save the souls variously threatened by the golem and the jinni, as well as by the Jewish conjurer and (surprise) a Syrian wizard. The interplay of loyalties and the struggle to assert reason over emotion keep the pages flipping. Naturally, this is precisely the part of the plot a reviewer must not reveal. Suffice it to say that there's a satisfyingly neat complexity to what must be accomplished, and free will does come into play when virtually everyone from scholar to golem to bakery worker must decide whether and how much to submit to another. 'You're made of earth,' says the jinni in Helene Wecker's novel. 'And you're made of fire,' replies the golem. Susann Cokal's next historical novel, "The Kingdom of Little Wounds," will be published in October. She teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 26, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
First novelist Wecker has blended not only genres but also elements of Jewish and Arab folklore and mythology in this intriguing historical fantasy. What happens when a golem, a Polish woman made of clay, recently marooned in late-nineteenth-century New York, joins forces with jinni, a creature made of fire, accidently released by a Syrian tinsmith in lower Manhattan? The premise is so fresh that it is anyone's guess, and Wecker does not disappoint as she keeps the surprises coming in this unusual story of the intersection of two magical beings and their joint impact on their parochial immigrant communities. While stolid Chava and fiery Ahmed struggle to cope with their individual challenges and desires, they must together overcome philosophical, spiritual, and physical hurdles to ward off an insidious demonic threat. A mystical and highly original stroll through the sidewalks of New York.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wecker's first novel is a magical tale of two mythical creatures-a golem from a Polish shtetl and a jinni from the Syrian Desert-struggling to fit in among New York's turn-of-the-19th-century immigrants. The golem is brought to America by poor furniture maker Otto Rotfeld, who had her built from clay to be his wife, but he dies en route. Elderly Rabbi Avram Meyer, recognizing the tall and hardworking young woman's supernatural character, gives her a name-Chava-and a job in a bakery, but ponders whether to destroy her or let her fulfill a destiny that legend dictates includes mayhem and destruction. Meanwhile, a tinsmith, Boutros Arbeely, releases the jinni from a thousand-year-old flask and names him Ahmad. Proud, handsome Ahmad proves a gifted metalworker, seduces a Fifth Avenue heiress, and pines for his long-lost glass palace before meeting Chava, his unlikely soul mate. Wecker deftly layers their story over those of the people they encounter, including a Jewish baker and his wife, a Maronite coffee shop owner and his wife, a doctor turned ice cream vendor, and an apostate social worker. The ending dips into melodrama, but the human touches more than compensate in Wecker's spellbinding blend of fantasy and historical fiction. Agent: Matt McGowan, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1899 two very different creatures find themselves in New York City. Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay and brought to life by a Polish magician to be the perfect wife. Ahmed is a jinni, a being made of fire, who has been released from a flask he's been bound in for centuries. Forming an unexpected friendship, Chava and Ahmed must learn how to survive undetected while preparing to battle a dangerous adversary. First-time novelist Wecker introduces readers to an immigrant community of kindly rabbis, skillful tinsmiths, and possessed ice cream venders that serves as an excellent backdrop for the debates between Chava and Ahmed about the use of power and the meaning of freedom. VERDICT Full of quirky characters and philosophical and religious musings, this fascinating blend of historical fiction and Jewish and Arab folklore excels when it comes to its gorgeous descriptions and the intriguing flashbacks to the jinni's earlier life, but it lacks some relationship development to ground Chava and Ahmed's romance. Overall this original and fresh story will attract fans of historical fantasy or folktales. [See Prepub Alert, 11/19/12.]-Katie Lawrence, Chicago (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Can't we all just get along? Perhaps yes, if we're supernatural beings from one side or another of the Jewish-Arab divide. In her debut novel, Wecker begins with a juicy premise: At the dawn of the 20th century, the shtetls of Europe and half of "Greater Syria" are emptying out, their residents bound for New York or Chicago or Detroit. One aspirant, "a Prussian Jew from Konin, a bustling town to the south of Danzig," is an unpleasant sort, a bit of a bully, arrogant, unattractive, but with enough loose gelt in his pocket to commission a rabbi-without-a-portfolio to build him an idol with feet of clay--and everything else of clay, too. The rabbi, Shaalman, warns that the ensuing golem--in Wecker's tale, The Golem--is meant to be a slave and "not for the pleasures of a bed," but he creates her anyway. She lands in Manhattan with less destructive force than Godzilla hit Tokyo, but even so, she cuts a strange figure. So does Ahmad, another slave bottled up--literally--and shipped across the water to a New York slum called Little Syria, where a lucky Lebanese tinsmith named Boutros Arbeely rubs a magic flask in just the right way and--shazam!--the jinni (genie) appears. Ahmad is generally ticked off by events, while The Golem is burdened with the "instinct to be of use." Naturally, their paths cross, the most unnatural of the unnaturalized citizens of Lower Manhattan--and great adventures ensue, for Shaalman is in the wings, as is a shadowy character who means no good when he catches wind of the supernatural powers to be harnessed. Wecker takes the premise and runs with it, and though her story runs on too long for what is in essence a fairy tale, she writes skillfully, nicely evoking the layers of alienness that fall upon strangers in a strange land. Two lessons: Don't discount a woman just because she's made of clay, and consider your wishes carefully should you find that magic lamp.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
