Two immigrants end up in 1890s New York: a shy and terribly inexperienced woman, and an egotistical and just as out-of-his-depth man. They find friends, and their footing, and then each other, and spend a long time figuring out who to trust. It’s a pretty familiar story.
What sets this book apart is that the woman is a Hebrew golem made of clay and the man is a Syrian genie made of fire. That makes things a little more tricky, and New York is tough to figure out even when you’re not a mythological creature in disguise.
(And the author spells it “jinni” but since a lot of people pronounce it and see it “genie” in their heads, I used that first to get everybody on the same page. Now that we’re there, I’ll stick to “jinni.”)
Chava, the golem, was created as a bride for a rich man on his way to America. (Yes, you should be creeped out; neither her maker nor her master were very nice people.) Before she could be tied to him permanently, though, the situation got complicated, and she ended up on her own, and able to pick up the emotions of anyone in the area (a side effect of the “not being tied to him permanently” situation; she was supposed to be able to cater instantly to his every wish. Yes, ew.)
As if being alone, newly made, unnaturally strong, and accidentally empathic wasn’t difficult enough, there’s also the slight possibility that she could turn into an unstoppable killing machine, because golems do that sometimes.
Meanwhile in another New York neighborhood, Ahmad wakes up on the floor of a Syrian tinsmith’s shop. He’s a little confused, because the last thing he remembers is being an invulnerable jinni in the desert, looking over his glass palace and thinking about visiting a caravan of interesting-looking nomads. Now he’s stuck in human form with a band of iron locked on his wrist, still frighteningly strong and able to set things on fire with his hands, but almost helpless when it comes to things like puddles and rain.
The tinsmith is much more confused though, because all he’d wanted to do was fix his neighbor’s oil lamp.
Helene Wecker manages to bring all these elements together so naturally they never seem silly or out of place. After she’s done setting up the story, a rabbi rescuing a golem from an angry mob or a jinni who whines about carrying an umbrella seems completely believable.
Wecker also balances a large cast of characters very well. Between the tinsmith, the Rabbi, the bakers, the nomad king, the girl in trouble, the silent boy, the cafe woman, the wizard, the head of the shelter, the daughter of the rich man, and the crazy ice cream seller, that’s a lot of back stories to squeeze in, but it never feels rushed or like there’s too much to remember. It’s all spelled out in a series of stories, many of them weaving around each other like a New York Arabian Nights.
The book is a historical fiction, and it’s easy to see Wecker did a huge amount of research to write it. It doesn’t revolve around big, splashy historical events, though. Her research was more about what bakery shops did during Passover, what a Syrian wedding looks like, and how New York would turn into a roof-top and fire-escape neighborhood during a sweltering summer night. The little details make the story very rich, and extremely readable. It’s easy to visualize all the events, without the story getting bogged down with too much description.
I wondered for awhile if Wecker had an opinion on religion that she was trying to push, as several characters have some pretty strong opinions on the subject. But as it turns out she left things very open. Some characters gave up on God a long time ago, and others stayed faithful despite everything, and both kinds ended up equally flawed and equally heroic.
It’s a magical book in places, but Wecker doesn’t feel the need to tie up a story in a pretty bow and a “they lived happily ever after.” Which is fine; it’s a wonderful New York fairy tale, so it fits that it’d be a little dark sometimes. It’s not beautiful in spite of the grimy places; most of the time it’s beautiful because of them.