Source of book: I own this.
Let me preface this post by saying that this was one of the most enjoyable reads of my year - and I highly recommend it for anyone who loves a compelling, exciting, and well-written story.
This book was a gift from my wife last Christmas, and she got it for me because her good friend (and fellow live theater aficionado) recommended it. Since said friend is a reader with excellent taste, I was unsurprised that this book was a worthy selection.
Before I discuss the book itself, I wanted to mention a few things about the author. The book has some supplementary stuff at the back, including an interview with Wecker and a note she wrote about writing, and there are some fun details.
Although she always wanted to be a writer, Wecker settled for a soul-crushing career in marketing. Eventually, she realized that if she didn’t take a risk, she would go to her grave regretting that she had never even tried.
So, she applied for an MFA program at Columbia, and when she was accepted, she asked her boyfriend if he would marry her and move to New York so she could start her writing career.
He said yes to both - apparently, he liked strong assertive women as much as I do - and she started writing.
Her first attempt was a realistic story of a Jewish girl and an Arab boy who become friends - kind of like her and her now husband. But it wasn’t working. A friend finally asked her why she was writing like that, when her true literary love was fantasy and SciFi?
That was the final piece of the puzzle, and she set off to write this book.
The Golem and the Jinni is firmly in the Magical Realism category. The characters and setting are all quite realistic - and she did a lot of research to get the details right. New York City around the turn of the 19th Century, the height of immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe and Christians from the Middle East, with vibrant ethnic neighborhoods and the bustle and tumult of the big city.
Except, well, a golem and a jinni are the main characters.
Most of us are familiar with the Westernized/bastardized versions of the Jinn from the translations of The Arabian Nights. Rub the lamp (or in this case, the oil flask), and out pops the Genie.
But perhaps not as many are familiar with the Jewish legend of the Golem.
A Golem is a humanoid creature made by a sorcerer out of clay. It is immensely powerful and nearly indestructible. Like the Jinn can be, it is bound to a master and will obey and protect that master.
The most famous legend is of one created in Prague, who defended the Jewish residents against pogroms. According to the legend, it still existed in an attic, sleeping until it was needed. I was unable to find a reference to a quip I read somewhere, by a Holocaust survivor - that the Golem must have slept the sleep of the dead to have missed its moment of need.
Golems can be male, female, neither, or both, and would typically be created to do menial tasks - their perfect obedience and tirelessness made them the perfect slave. The risk, however, is that they are very literal, and are difficult to stop once you start them.
The first story about a “robot” - where we get the term from - takes many of the elements of the Golem legend and makes it mechanical rather than earth-based. One can also see the idea in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
So, with those ideas in mind, Wecker takes us on a journey that explores the immigrant experience with its alienation, loneliness, and search for connection. She asks us what sentience means, what free will means, what freedom means. She also looks at the opposite ideas, particularly the different ways of being bound, of being trapped, of being unable to escape one’s fate.
We first meet the Golem. A rather loathsome and unscrupulous man hires an equally loathsome and unscrupulous kabbalist to create him a golem to be his wife and servant. In a moment of unexpected whimsey, he asks not only that she be obedient and attractive and chaste, but that she be intelligent and full of curiosity.
Hmm, that sounds highly dangerous in a woman, doesn’t it?
Things go badly wrong, though. The man gets impatient and wakes his golem up prematurely - while enroute to America. And then dies of appendicitis soon thereafter, thus leaving behind a golem only a few days old, with no master and no idea what on earth to do with herself.
She walks across the water - well, under it on the ocean floor - from Ellis Island to Manhattan, and tries to figure out how to avoid being detected. An elderly rabbi with some kabbalistic knowledge himself sees her and recognizes what she is. He takes her in and names her Chava, and does what he can to get her a start in life, while he figures out what to do with her.
Golems are dangerous, after all: they are immensely strong, and have a tendency to go crazy and stomp the shit out of anyone who threatens their master. Chava has a good heart, but is she safe? She can read the thoughts of most people - or at least their emotions - which is a double-edged blade. It enables her to please people, but it also means she can sense fear, and be tempted to lose control and destroy the threat.
So what to do? Destroy her? (She has a spell of destruction that came with the one to wake her.) Perhaps find a way to bind her to a new master?
Well, for the time being, he gets her a job in a bakery and a place to live, while he races against his declining health to find a solution.
Meanwhile, in the Syrian quarter, a woman, Maryam, takes an heirloom oil flask to Arbeely the tinsmith, for a little cleanup. As he is restoring it, the Jinni appears, freed from his container, but with no memory of how he got in.
Oh, and he is also now (mostly) a human, and bound with an iron ring on his arm. No wishes to grant here, but he can create fire and do incredible work with metal. Arbeely decides he should go by Ahmad - a common name that will attract little notice - and work in the business.
In this book, Jinni are creatures of fire, and so are vulnerable to water. Rain and snow are dangerous to Ahmad, as he finds out. He likewise is incredibly strong.
So, we have the two protagonists, earth and fire, and with equivalent temperaments. They eventually meet and begin a friendship - a companionship of the outcasts, so to speak. Both are hiding who they are from the rest of the world, and neither has a true companion who understands who and what they are fully.
But there is a lot more to this book than merely that - although their exploration of their new world takes up most of the first half of the book, in a slowly unfolding story of an unusual immigrant experience.
Each of the characters learns a lot and experiences a lot before they finally meet, which means a number of side plots and supporting characters. This is a good thing. One of the joys of this book is the world that is created - a vibrant city that seemed so much more real since I finally visited New York earlier this year.
There is Salah, the ice cream seller, who had been a brilliant doctor before an incident involving a demon of some sort blinded him and addled his mind. Maryam is the woman who has a finger in everything in the Syrian community, and a tongue and energy to match. Arbeely and Rabbi Meyer. The rabbi’s nephew Michael, an atheist who runs a shelter for immigrants. Matthew, the young boy who is drawn to Ahmad. Anna, the feckless bakery employee, who gets pregnant by a worthless man. Sophia, the rich girl who Ahmad finds himself drawn to, with serious consequences for both of them.
And then there is the villain, the man who created Chava. He is obsessed with his quest to find eternal life (ironic, as we eventually find out), and who follows Chava across the ocean. He is connected to Ahmad somehow too, although we do not find out the truth until near the end.
The last 100 pages really pick up the pace, and there are some crazy twists that eventually lead to a truly satisfying if disconcerting conclusion.
I really don’t want to say any more than that about the plot, because seeing it unfold as you read is one of the joys of this book.
I do want to mention a few lines, as usual.
Rabbi Meyer has a great analysis of Chava’s creator:
“Whoever it was, was brilliant, and reckless, and quite amoral.”
In the same exchange, Chava is shocked to find out that Meyer is not going to destroy her. After all, he had that thought. His response is excellent.
“A man might desire something for a moment, while a larger part of him rejects it. You’ll need to learn to judge people by their actions, not their thoughts.”
This would be the serious downside to being able to read minds. Each and every one of us have thoughts that we reject - fortunately. It really is best most of the time to be able to judge people by their behavior rather than their thoughts, or even their words.
Michael is a bit of a tragic hero in the book. He has good intentions, and does good in the world, but he is ultimately undone by his inability to do what Chava does too well: read people. And yet, he also has some insights into human nature. He says about the immigrants he serves:
“They all need the same things - a place to stay, a job, English lessons. But some will be happy with whatever comes their way, and others won’t be satisfied with anything. And there’s always a few who are only looking to take advantage. So when my friends talk about how best to fix the world, it all sounds so naive. As though there could be one solution that would solve every man’s problem, turn us into innocents in the Garden of Eden. When in truth we will always have our lesser natures.”
There is this thread of pessimism and resignation to fate that runs through Jewish writing (and this book) right alongside an insistence on the right to kvetch about it. Every character has this tendency, even Ahmad, who is more naturally optimistic and exuberant. At one point the villain says, “There is never hope. There’s only what can be done and what cannot.”
Another iconic moment is when Chava discovers the writings of the late rabbi, describing her. He raises some fascinating questions about all of us.
“Just the power of speech alone requires some degree of free will. Perhaps only within certain boundaries, a middle ground between autonomy and enslavement? Yes, true of all of us, but not nearly so precarious a balance, or so dangerous to miscalculate.”
And:
“Will she ever be capable of real love, of happiness? Beginning to hope so, against my own better judgment.”
Chava herself is greatly disturbed by the whole thing.
It was edifying, in a sense, to see her own origins, but at the same time she felt humiliated, reduced to nothing more than words. The request for modest behavior, for example: it rankled her to think of her arguments with the Jinni on the subject, how fervently she’d defended an opinion she’d had no choice but to believe. And if she was meant to be curious, did that mean she could take no credit for her own discoveries, her accomplishments? Had she nothing of her own, only what Joseph Schall decreed she should have?
I have honestly questioned this myself. In so many ways, I am who I was created to be. I am curious, a divergent thinker, one who feels deeply, one who has a strong sense of justice and fair play. But are these something I can take credit for? Am I just a deterministic robot, destined to be who I am? Or am I somehow that balance of nature and free will? It certainly is easier to live with a belief in free will.
At the risk of giving a spoiler, I did also want to mention a line about the cycle of reincarnation that the villain is trapped in. It is so good that I will take the risk.
Presented with a religious tradition, he was drawn to its darkest, most mystical corners; in politics, he displayed an unwavering taste for power.
Perhaps Faust, or something even darker. And again, is this a path he has no choice but to follow? Is there no escape for him?
The thing about the ending that I love the most is that this ambiguity is never resolved. There is no “one true moment of freedom” for either Chava or Ahmed. Rather, they must live in this tension, between free will and determinism, between freedom and slavery. They ultimately must, as the existentialists would say, make their own meaning, find their own path, navigate their own destiny. And do so as outsiders.
Perhaps it is this that makes this book more than just a good story - and it is a really good story. It doesn’t merely describe fantastical characters, but it makes them avatars for our own deepest questions, hopes, and fears. We are all Chava and we are all Ahmad.
Definitely give this book a read. There is a sequel that came out a few years ago, and I am curious if it is any good. It is always difficult to follow up a book this good, but I may have to give it a try.
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