The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

Author: Helene Wecker

Rating: ⭐ 3/5

Date Read: 2014/02/06

Pages: 486

3.5 stars, but I’m rounding down because this was far longer than it needed to be.

I’m not even going to bother to tell you what a Golem or a Jinni is: other people have tried, and it really does make sense once you start reading. This is a story about outsiders to humanity, acting in a way that comes as unnaturally to them as it comes naturally to us. This is some nice fodder for both philosophical treatises on humanity and, by proxy, the immigrant experience. Unfortunately, the book never does this quite as effectively as, say, [b:The Unbearable Lightness of Being|9717|The Unbearable Lightness of Being|Milan Kundera|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1265401884s/9717.jpg|4489585] or [b:The Jungle|41681|The Jungle|Upton Sinclair|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1332140681s/41681.jpg|1253187].

But that’s not my big issue with this: after all, most books aren’t as good as the two I just mentioned. My problem was that it seemed that Wecker didn’t know whether she wanted to write an updated fairy tale, or a sweeping epic narrative, or a quiet book about humanity, or an action-packed adventure story. So she kind of just wrote them all, and as a result things got a little muddled, to put it mildly. Thus, the pacing changed about 2/3 of the way into the book, characters I thought I knew did 180s on me, and story lines that should have stayed separate suddenly coalesced in a way that was so awkward I literally rolled my eyes while eating a grilled cheese sandwich at Panera. The exact moment this book completely lost me was when we found out that Joseph Schall, the creator of the Golem, was also the reincarnation of wizard that capture the Jinni. Come on.

You’d think someone with an MFA would know better than to throw all regard to cohesive narrative structure out the window. Then again, it’s possible that the MFA just convinces writers that they’re totally allowed to break all the rules because, like, they already know them all. It’s a good thing Tolstoy never got an MFA: I’m sure it would have drastically reduced his ability to write well.

Anyway, that’s not to say this book wasn’t fun: it was. It actually reminded me of the kind of mindlessly magical, adventuresome stuff that [a:Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg] writes, and a lot of people seem to really like that. It’s not exactly for me though.

My recommendation is to read [b:The Snow Child|11250053|The Snow Child|Eowyn Ivey|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327098624s/11250053.jpg|16176521] instead: [a:Eowyn Ivey|4823432|Eowyn Ivey|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1327102553p2/4823432.jpg] managed to do the realistic modernish fairy tale without any dubious coincidences, and in less than 400 pages to boot.