The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wicker
First reviewed June 2013
Ten years ago already. Hearsay tells me the sequels aren’t as good—I haven’t read them. But I still remember this book a decade later, and I still recommend it.
As for the review, I think my writings is a bit more clear, and I have worked on my semicolon obsession (which I left intact for this review because the amount is simply absurd). Also, remember when I tried to actually “product review” the book like it was a commodity? No thanks, 30-year-old me, no thanks.
In some fiction, a cloying sense of inevitability sticks to everything; NPR’s “This American Life” summed it up pretty well with an apocryphal quote of vague Asian attribution—“No coincidence, no story.” And it makes sense: why invest in reading a book or watching a program when nothing capital-"I" Interesting happens?
The Golem and the Jinni deftly skirts the relentlessness of forced novelty by taking its main characters—drawn from mythos outside of the ultracommon Greek standards—and plunking them down in a very well-realized New York City around the turn of the last century. The plot doesn’t push them into any fantastical journeys or special situations that lead to the creation of a new understanding, but pits them both against the day-to-day reality of trying to find one’s place in the world. The coincidence that makes the story is the magical nature of the cast; they are outsized, mystical, but still clear allusions to the cultures from which they are drawn; a fascinating way to take the mundane troubles of early twentieth century immigrant cultures and make them palatable to a casual audience.
The subtly of the references to old New York add to the verisimilitude without bludgeoning the reader: the much-vaunted subways are still in their pupal “elevated” form, Manhattan’s Five Points still exists, and one character drops a quick reference to the mineral springs at Saratoga:
He’d begun to think of his illness as a strange parting gift from his uncle, an opportunity to rest and be cared for. Not quite taking the waters at Saratoga, but as close as he’d ever get.
If you catch them, great; if you don’t, no worries. But they are there, and they add to the atmosphere; a reminder that the reader is a traveler out of time and place—as much as the Golem and the Jinni are themselves—discovering the world of old New York City one page at a time.
The ubiquity of multi-point-of-view narration that has overtaken modern fiction fits smoothly into The Golem and the Jinni. Both characters address the same concerns—apartments, jobs, friends, society—in very different ways. The swaps of narrative perspective at the chapter breaks do what they should in a great book; the reader wants to continue with the Golem at the start of a Jinn chapter, yet at the start of a Golem chapter the recently ended Jinn chapter lingers in the mind. As the two characters’ lives become intertwined, the perspective swaps increase in both speed in frequency, sometimes occurring multiples times within the same chapter. This structural choice emphasizes their relationship in a way that rigid “one chapter, one perspective” would not, and heightens the ties that bind them together in the mind of the reader. Their separate and unique stories have fused together in a very real, physical way.
The Golem and the Jinni is a fantastic read that can easily cross the fantasy threshold into popular mainstream fiction. While a synopsis of the plot might seem tedious if you were to insert “normal” immigrants for the two mythological creatures, the commingling of Arabic and Jewish culture in old New York is enough to sustain the story. The soft touch of magic opens wide the possibilities on every page, helping to outline the characters rather than define and drive the plot. The world is grounded—it feels real. It is an impressive feat to create a story where a Golem and a Jinn can meet that doesn’t feel schlocky; doubly so when the setting has more than a century of historical baggage between the characters and the reader.