By Amber McGee
Courier Staff Columnist
So a woman made of clay and a man made of fire walk into a bar.
Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, right? Actually, just replace ‘a bar’ with ‘New York’ and you’ve got the premise of The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker.
Chava is a masterless Golem, Ahmad is a Jinni released from his lamp after hundreds of years, and the city of New York is their playground. With the help of a rabbi and a tinsmith these two supernatural creatures attempt to blend in with their human neighbors. In this new world the two must learn to go against their own natures, because for them, discovery means death.
For the first ¾ of the book readers will get to experience the mundane, everyday lives of Chava and Ahmad as they try to adjust to their new environments. They will also be able to experience the mundane, everyday lives of those Chava and Ahmad cross paths with. Every now and then something amusing or interesting will happen, like Ahmad getting so bored one day he decides to go visit the daughter of a rich New York businessman.
Other than those small anecdotes and the occasional flashback that hints at a coming conflict there is nothing of major significance that happens in these parts. Characters are built and their backgrounds are explored, but until the very end of the book it doesn’t become clear why this is a thing that’s happening. The setting of New York in the turn of the 20th century made the read more enjoyable, but it also brought up new problems as well.
Golems are creatures from Jewish lore. On the other hand, Jinni’s are from Arabian mythology. Where one would expect to see a prominent culture clash, not only in that these are two non-human creatures trying to live in a human world, but also in that they come from two completely different backgrounds, there is none. For all the time readers will learn about the Rabbi’s nephew Michael’s habit of overworking there will be barely any mention of what the two different neighborhoods the characters live in are like. Glimpses and vague descriptions are given, but other than naming a few landmarks, Chava and Ahmad could have been living in your “average” neighborhood and readers would be nonethewiser.
Much as it was in The Night Circus, Chava and Ahmad don’t meet until halfway into the book. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it hadn’t been so spaced out with pages upon pages of filler in between. On the plus side, once the two meet, the events in the book begin to pick up.
The last fourth of the book was easily one of my favorite parts. There were still areas where belief had to be even more suspended than before to get through the final scenes, but in the end it all paid out. Sort of.
After nearly five hundred pages the book ends rather lukewarm. The best way is to describe it as a roller coaster that only got twisty at the end, then stopped. You’re left asking “That’s it? There’s not more?” And left feeling giddy from the twists, but blue from the long wait before them.
Wecker had a clear idea of what she wanted to write about, but with fantasy ideas there are endless amount of details that can be added. Not all of them should be, and this is a lesson that hopefully Wecker will remember next time. The Golem and the Jinni didn’t serve my every need nor grant all my wishes, but it tried, and unlike other books, it was still a fun read in the end.