Category: Fiction Reviews

The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni is a debut novel by Helene Wecker. The novel is a mixture of historical fiction and fantasy. The two title characters are magical creatures who unexpectedly find themselves living as immigrants in New York City around 1899. Chava is a golem created from clay by a Jewish mistic kabbalist and Ahmad is a jinni, a creature of fire, who has been trapped in a copper flask for centuries by a wizard.

The story opens in the Polish town of Konin. A local man, Otto Rotfeld, is planning to immigrate to the United States and desires to take a wife with him. Rotfeld seeks out a Jewish mistic kabbalist, Yehudah Schaalman, to make him a wife out of clay. Rotfeld asks for a submissive wife, but also request that she be curious as well. Although Schaalman foresees disaster for Rotfeld, he does as Rotfeld requests and makes him a golem for a wife.

On the voyage to the United States, Rotfeld disobeys Schaalman’s instructions and wakes the golem while still at sea. The golem wakes with no knowledge of the world but is able to sense her master’s desires and seeks to carry them out. Soon thereafter, Rotfeld becomes seriously ill and passes away. The newly awakened golem is left masterless and must use her ability to read other’s desires to hide her true nature from the other passengers while the voyage continues.

Upon arrival in New York, the golem escapes the vessel, bypasses immigration, and makes her way to the Jewish quarter. There, the golem is discovered by Rabbi Avram Meyer, who takes the golem in and names her Chava. The rabbi considers destroying Chava, as he knows how dangerous a golem can be, but decides to help Chava lead as close to normal an existence as is possible.

Meanwhile, a Christian Syrian tinsmith, Boutrous Arbeely, takes on the task of reviving an ancient copper flask. During repairs, Arbeely accidentally frees a jinni from the flask. Like the golem, the jinni is soon trying to fit into society and pass as a human, taking the name Ahmad and working at the tin-smithery with Arbeely.

Much of the story focuses on Chava’s and Ahmad’s struggles with passing as human. Both spend the hours of the nighttime awake and alone. Eventually their paths cross and they recognize each other as magical creatures. They soon forge a fraught friendship and explore the city together at night. They have opposing views on the communities that they live with and what each should be seeking in life. Chava wants to be as human as possible and seeks to fill the needs of those around her while Ahmad resents being trapped in human form and seeks a way to escape his imprisonment. The story climaxes with the arrival of an antagonist with ties to both Chava and Ahmad.

Through the novel, Wecker explores aspects of her relationship with her husband. Wecker is of Jewish heritage and her husband is of Arab heritage, which mirrors the origins of the golem Chava and the jinni Ahmad. Wecker has said that elements of the story were inspired by “similarities between our families, the way that certain themes echo between them.”

Further, the story deals with themes on class divide, the immigrant experience, and feminism. Through the fantasy lens of the golem Chava and the jinni Ahmad we experience the difficulties in assimilation to a new culture and what it means to hide one’s true nature.

— Jim Lynch

Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger

William Kent Krueger’s novel Ordinary Grace won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Anthony Award, and The Barry Award for 2013. Krueger has also written a series of mystery stories set in Minnesota based on sheriff/detective Cork O’Connor. 

Ordinary Grace is a coming of age-story set in 1961 New Bremen, Minnesota. The story is narrated by Frank Drum as an adult forty years later. He recounts the events and challenges of that summer when everything he, as a thirteen year old, thought he knew of the world he was living in, was falling apart. We feel, see, hear and think as the thirteen year old in this story. It feels as if the town and characters were very real in their human experiences and emotions. The tone of this story is written with a quiet melancholy air. 

Based in the small town of New Bremen, Minnesota, 13 year-old Frank, his brother Jake, and sister Ariel live with their parents Nathan, a Methodist minister and his wife Ruth. The story begins with the death of Bobby Cole, a child with golden hair and thick glasses killed on the railroad tracks. In that summer, the town saw five deaths, one of them was a member of the Drum family. Frank’s innocent summer transforms into a dark journey into adulthood. 

The family members and the community deal with the deaths in many ways: goodness, joy, kindness, cruelty, anger and grace. The book raises questions of racism, war, mental illness, forgiveness, despair, faith and redemption. Often in the face of despair, Nathan spoke quiet humble words of faith to the community helping us, as the reader, to begin to understand the awful grace of God. 

The action, characters, picturesque writing and the setting all enhance the story. The writing allows you to feel the depth of despair, the joy of life and ordinary grace of God. 

One question raised in the novel is, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” Ordinary Grace is a journey of that question. 

But it is Jake who offers us the most profound understanding of ordinary grace. “And that was it. A grace so ordinary that there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” At the end of the novel, we glimpse in understanding the quote of what is ordinary grace. 

— Deb Krueger

The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

The Master Butchers Singing Club is a mouthful of a title. But read closely, and you’ll see how the role of songs is critical to the book’s message. This is a book about a community in which music is a connector, bringing together people who have grown up in the town, but nevertheless are outsiders, immigrants who are building businesses and relationships, and native Americans who live nearby yet worlds apart.

The traumas of two world wars and of Wounded Knee, of family loss and community estrangement permeate the ground. Songs heal. Songs of patriotism, of war, of love and belonging pervade the book as this engaging cast of characters seeks belonging and a sense of home, not always sure where that is.

The book starts after WWI, as Fidelis Waldvogel leaves Germany for the United States, planning to take a train to Seattle, paying his way selling sausages. He runs out of money in Argus, North Dakota, and ends up making a life there. When his can afford it, he brings his wife Eva and her son Franz to join him. Fidelis and Eva run a successful butcher’s shop and he leads the men’s singing group, which includes Roy, the town drunk, a competing butcher, the sheriff, a doctor, and poor Porky Chavers whose singing might have gotten him killed.  

While the men are singing, the women are talking. Eva, by now the mother of four sons, nurtures Delphine, who grew up a motherless misfit in the town, but left for a brief stint as a table in a balancing act with Cyprian, her gay unmarried husband with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Delphine is close friends with Clarisse, the town undertaker, who is shunned by men because of her occupation. Hock, the sheriff, thinks he’s a prize because he wants her no matter what. The “no matter what” wasn’t what he was expecting. Franz’s girlfriend Mazarine lives in poverty, which makes her the butt of jokes until Delphine helps her with a new wardrobe. And Step and a Half keeps walking and watching, helping from the sidelines.

Fidelis and Eva’s sons are vital to the story as World War II looms and Franz learns to fly, marries Mazarine, and heads to Europe to be a hero. Markus becomes bookish and leans on Delphine to fill the void left by his mother’s death, either trapping Delphine or offering her sanctuary—Delphine’s not too sure. And the twins, Emil and Erich, move back to Germany with their stern aunt, Tante, becoming Hitler youths ready to fight their American brothers.

Then there’s the mystery of the bodies in Roy’s basement—and the beads embedded in an odd sealant that kept the cellar door shut. What was Roy’s role in their deaths? Was Clarisse involved? How did the beads get there? And why won’t the sheriff move on and acknowledge it was a tragic accident?

Erdrich explains some of this, but not all. She leaves crumbs for us to find in careful reading. But she isn’t there to answer all our questions, or to leave all plot points neatly tied up. That’s neither real life nor a good book, and she masterfully gives as both.

— Pat Prijatel