The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Title: The Golem And The Jinni
Author: Helene Wecker
Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy, although I'm tempted to say historical fiction as well but that leads to a really strange combination.
Series: No
Pages: 486
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: 2.5 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable band of iron binds him to the physical world.

The Golem and the Jinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

Feelings: 
This was a well written very readable first novel from Helene Wecker. I enjoyed reading the book. I did wonder how all of the different narratives would come together but they did. When they did I almost wondered if it was too neat at the end and I think it was. The ending just wasn't believable to me. The strongest part of the book is the setting in New York City in 1899. The setting was beautiful and added to the story. It felt real and historical. However, the story with the relationship between characters progresses very slowly.

There was a question I had the carried through the book and it does bother me a bit that it was never answered. What was Ahmad's real name? He thought about it all the time yet it seemed like he was unable to do anything about it because of the form he was stuck in. I guess I'm willing to let it go but still it seemed like a very important thing to a main character and yet it is never answered.

Another thing that bothered me is why do we start getting flashbacks of Fadwa when the jinni has no memory of her and yet her story starts long before the jinni has anyway of knowing about her. She is the blank space in his memory that bothers him. I don't think it helped the story for us to know about her before the jinni does.

From the start of the book to the end of the book we follow thirteen or fourteen different people. There are only two main narrators: Chava, the Golem, and Ahmad, the jinni. There are also three minor narrators: Boutros Arbeely, Yehudah Schaalman later called Joseph Schall, and Mahmoud Saleh. The other eight play relatively small parts in the narration: Ratfeld, Rabbi Avram Meyer,  Fadwa al-Hadid, Michael Levy, Sophia Winston, Abu Yusuf, Anna Blumberg, and ibn Malik. Some of these are in flash back. I feel that I also may have missed the switches of point of view at times and there might have been more. The number does seem like a lot for a book but it does work because everything merges nicely together. At the end of the book I felt like the convergence of all of the different narratives was a little to neat. That is probably my biggest problem with the book, the joining of the narratives seemed to neat that the end. There really weren't any loose ends left.

From Syria, and Europe to New York City the story moved smoothly and the relationship between Chava and Ahmad was interesting to watch. They seemed so different and to have largely opposing personalities yet they find they have much in common. Their fear of being discovered as being something other than human brings them together. Both characters were fun to follow and I enjoyed reading this book.

I would recommend this book to those that like historical fiction as well as those that like fantasy. However, I will note that in a lot of ways this feels to me a bit more like historical fiction than fantasy.



*****SPOILERS BELOW*****

I wanted to like this book so much but I ended up thinking it could have been better and I could have liked it more than I did. So let me name the things about the book and talk a little about each one.

1. The jinni gets a name and he hates it. It isn't his real name but for some reason, not explained, he can't have that name. However, if he dislikes the name Ahmad so much why doesn't he just change it? Seems like he could if he wanted to.
2. The back story of the characters. I felt like the back story of the jinni and Fadwa came before the jinni had a memory of it and that just didn't seem right to me. Also, there were so many characters whose back story we got. I felt like it may have muddled the book a bit. This isn't to say that I didn't like their stories I just didn't see how it really added to the story of the Golem and the Jinni.
3. THE ENDING. I just didn't think it felt real. one when the golem gets a master she doesn't feel anything for the jinni anymore and is more than happy to throw him around at the slightest thought from Schaalman, however, as soon as Schaalman is in the bottle she suddenly returns to her old self. She has a master now, she should be doing everything she can to get Schaalman out of the bottle but she doesn't do that. She instead goes back to how things were before she was bound to him. She does say she can still feel his screams of anger at being in the bottle but she ignores them. Really, she can ignore them? That just doesn't seem right. Schaalman is her baster now she would not be able to ignore him. That was very unbelievable to me.
4. The prologue ending. The relationship between the golem and the jinni at the end. They were both very unhappy in New York City why are they staying there? Also, I'm not sure that I buy that they would end up in a relationship. Yes they think about each other but I'm not sure it was more than friendship. I felt like the ending with the relationship between the golem and the jinni was a bit forced and I would have liked it more it the ending had been different.