Hi Steemians!
I just posted the video of my December reading wrap-up but wanted to share a full written review of one particularly engaging book I read last month: The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker.
(picture credit: Goodreads)
The book actually has very little plot and is very character-driven, but in this case it actually worked really well.
The story follows two main figures: the golem Chava and the djinni Ahmed. Chava is a being made of clay, whose master dies shortly after awakening her on the voyage from Poland to New York, leaving her all by herself in a foreign city. She ends up with a Jewish rabbi who takes her in and promises to keep her secret.
Ahmed is a djinni, who had been put into a flask by a wizard many centuries ago and who's been more or less "freed" by a Syrian tinsmith who takes him on as a worker in his shop.
Both of them are confronted with the strangeness of New York that neither of them are used to and the requirements placed upon them to blend into human society and not have their true natures detected. Both struggle with this issue and go about solving it in very different ways. The golem has been specifically created to serve a master and feels very lost without one. She can read human minds to predict their wishes and finds it incredibly difficult to resist the urge to fulfill them all. She's also quite shy and worried about being detected and that detection subsequently leading to innocent humans getting hurt through her immense strength, that she also struggles to control.
The djinni on the other hand had been used to roaming the desert and essentially doing as he pleased before being put into the bottle. He is still confined in human form and therefore restricted in his actions, but he still goes about town quite careless of humans and their needs or desires. He doesn't care what consequences his actions might bring for others, which makes him quite unlikeable to some humans and also makes him stick out of the crowd in the tight-knit community he ends up residing in.
The golem and the djinni's lives end up intertwining and both realize that their own way of life isn't ideal. The golem's constant fight against her own nature is causing her severe discomfort and mental strain, and the djinni is realizing that his actions do in fact affect others and that he maybe should start paying some closer attention. The two develop a friendship and end up working together against a common threat that arrives in New York as well.
This book discusses the lives of these two immigrants under precisely that viewpoint and also depicts the different cultures present in New York at the time quite beautifully. The characters are so well fleshed out and believable that it makes the whole story incredibly engaging and readable. I loved to see these characters and their friendship develop. Similarly, the supporting characters also all come with a backstory that isn't talked about at tedious and irrelevant length but just well enough explained to justify their place in the story and make them appear more real.
Overall, I was extremely pleasantly surprised with this book and would definitely recommend it to everyone to read! I ended up giving it 4/5 stars; dropping the one star because of the somewhat odd ending. Nevertheles, a wonderful novel and I really cannot wait for the sequel!
Have you read The Golem and the Djinni? Let me know what you thought of it!
Happy reading!
xx
ivymuse