Read 2: July 21st, 2021

The Golem and the Jinni is a foundational text for me. It introduced me to some of my favourite tropes and character dynamics and has defiantly influenced my taste in the last five years. Revisiting this story after five years was interesting. While my core feelings about the story haven’t changed much aspects of the story hit me in different ways. When I first read the Golem and the Jinni I was completely infatuated with Ahmad. His passion and flights of fancy were had me completely enamoured. The reserved and cautious Chava in contrast felt stifling. Upon reread I found Ahmed’s recklessness less charming and swoon-worthy. Chava’s pragmatism felt a lot more admirable. But a constant about my feelings for the two was my love for how well-rounded and fleshed out they were.

Despite my flipped perspective on Ahmed and Chava, their friendship was still delightful to read. In the five years since I first read this book I have yet to find many books with a relationship as strong as the one depicted here. The instant understanding and connection conveyed between these two lost creatures is unparalleled. Wecker’s outstanding ability to make even the most banal conversations between Ahmed and Chava feel earth-shatteringly significant still amazes me.

Unfortunately, five years didn’t soften my distaste for the plotting of this book. The book's biggest failure was its transformation from a quiet character study to a plot-driven and fast-paced narrative in its third act. The Golem and the Jinni shines in its quiet moments. For the majority of its page count, the narrative lingers on mundane moments and takes us slowly through the day-to-day of its protagonists. The brilliant way Wecker evoked that quiet mundanity made the climax all the more jarring. The novel veered in a direction that wasn’t primed by its set up making the book feel uneven and disappointing.

Read 1: December 30th, 2017
3.75 stars

The Golem and the Jinni is one of those books that starts out amazing but slowly loses all of the things you loved about it at the start. What started as an interesting character-focused story became an overfilled mess by the end.

Let’s start with the positives, the main characters: Chava (the Golem) and Ahmad (the Jinni) were fantastic protagonists. I loved them from the moment they stepped on the page. Chava was wholly sympathetic and I was completely invested in seeing her succeed in her struggle to both fight against her nature as a golem and also use that to help people whenever she could. The fact that she was an inherently kind person who was compelled to help anyone in need made her someone you couldn’t help but root for.

Ahmad acted as a fantastic foil to Chava, he was selfish and often put his desires at the forefront, uncaring about the consequences his actions would have on others. I know I just described an unlikeable asshole but Wecker managed to write him in a way that made him endearing instead of intolerable. Ahmad had some of the funniest lines in this book and was almost swoon-worthy at times. I just loved how he never compromised himself and his beliefs to suit other people’s needs.

The best parts of this book are when Chava and Ahmad were just spending time with each other. They are each other’s natural opposites but the connection between these two was undeniable. I could read an entire 500 page novel of these two just walking in the park arguing about things. They worked well together because they were good foils for each other but still had this great connection as the only one of their kind.

Wecker also managed to blow me away with the world-building of this story. She manages to create such a rich and interesting picture of New York City in the early 1900s and seeing the immigrant communities at this time was wonderful. I loved Little Syria and the Jewish community that was shown in this book and seeing the lives of immigrants at the time was great. I also liked the exploration of religion and faith in the book, an unexpected but nice touch.

The biggest problem with this book is we followed what I felt was too many characters and plot lines. I felt there was no real need to include such great detail about the lives of what I felt were just periphery characters. I can see why it seemed necessary to show Fadwa and Schaalman’s lives extensively but every time we switched to their perspectives I was counting down the pages so we can get back to the good stuff. I also found Saleh’s inclusion in the story, while well written and heartbreaking at times, to be entirely unnecessary.

The last third of the book was significantly weaker in my opinion. The book moves away from its more slow-moving, character-focused pace to being filled with dumps of plot-related information and following story threads I didn’t care about. The amount of time spent on developing the backstory of Ahmad and the main antagonist of the story was so excessive unnecessary. I didn’t need to know how and why Ahmad was trapped in the bottle for a millennium, but damn we spent so much time uncovering that mystery. I couldn’t care less about Schaalman and his desire to avoid death but we spent so much time exploring that plotline. By the climax of the story I was mourning the loss of the quiet character focussed novel this book was a hundred pages ago.

Overall, there was so much to love about The Golem and the Jinni but it was bogged down by what I felt was an excess of unnecessary characters and plot lines. The conclusion to the novel was satisfying and I leave the story with positive feelings despite its shortcomings.