Yuffie's Book Reviews

The Golem and the Jinni - by Helen Wecker

--Published Book--

I picked this up because it got a tremendous number of good reviews on Goodreads and I saw recommendations for it on several reading lists.

And I have no flippin idea why.

This book was so DULL. It was 484 pages of a Jinni with amazing fire powers sitting around mending pots and making jewlery and a golem with super strength sitting at home sewing all night long and baking pastries at the local bakery all day. Literally, the pace is so slow I had to muster every ounce of will power to keep reading.

The premise was awesome: An ugly, unsucessful man hires a wizard to build him a golem wife, but right off the bat, the man dies and the golem is left alone on a boat headed for New York. Elsewhere, a tinsmith discovers a flask with a jinni trapped inside and frees him, but the jinni is trapped in human form. The golem, Chava, embodies obedience and caution whereas the jinni, Ahmad, is all about freedom and instant gratification.

You'd think this dynamic would make an awesome story! WRONG. These two protagonists don't even meet until around page 275. Almost THREE HUNDRED PAGES IN do they finally meet. And what happens when they meet? They just walk around the city and argue over philosophy and eventually get so mad at each other that they part ways for good.

Honestly, this was a huge missed opportunity. You have a GOLEM and a JINNI walking around New York, and all they do is simply exist. They barely do anything important in the story, and even at the climax when the golem's creator is trying to destroy her and capture the jinni, they defeat him in the most predictable, Aladdin-like, way. And then the golem and jinni continue their boring lives exactly as before. Seriously, nothing changed at all over the course of this story other than the bad guy getting trapped in the jinni's flask, which really didn't change much since he showed up in the last fifth of the book.

And the characters... ugh... I hated every single one of them, including the protagonists. I don't know if I'm inherently evil or what, but every time something bad happened to any of the MCs or side characters, I was like YES. SERVES YOU RIGHT. About halfway through the book, I honestly wanted every single character to die a greusome death. There was nothing endearing about them. Here's an example. she turned down this guy who was interested in her, didn't speak to him for months, then almost kills someone by accident so she comes to that guy out of the blue and proposes to him, and he immediately accepts, overjoyed that she "loves" him. So when, several weeks/months later, he finds out she's actually a mythical creature made out of clay, he flips his sh*t and gets all depressed that she doesn't actually love him. NO SH*T SHERLOCK. He never even ASKED her why she suddenly asked him to marry her. Not once. The guy's an idiot, so hopefully you can see why I had no sympathy for his distress.

Ahmad is over 1000 years old and has the emotional maturity of a 9 year old. Chava is the dullest protagonist ever... She exists to follow orders because of her golem nature, yes, but that doesn't make an interesting protagonist. She never truly fought her nature other than trying to fit in as a human, nor did she try to do something worthwhile with herself. She was always just quiet and careful and tried to fade into the background, and while that was pretty interesting characterization at first, after 484 pages of the exact same thing, I was banging my head against the wall.

During the climax, I was actually skimming because this was so ridiculously dull. The climax of all things should be at least a little interesting. Nope. So Ahmad snuck into some rich chick's room once and seduced her, and apparently having sex with a jinni makes you terribly ill, so the chick went on a Europe trip to rest or something. Anyway, all she really knew about Ahmad was that he was awesome in bed, so imagine my eyerolling during the climax when Ahmad tries to commit suicide to kill the evil antagonist wizard dude (it sounds a lot more epic than it actually was in the book) and the golem brings him to the rich chick's house to throw him in the fireplace so he can heal, and the rich chick acts like this is all perfectly okay. She treats Ahmad like an old friend when all he really did was have sex with her, ruin her health, destroy her marriage, and ruin her life. And she's all cheery when the golem THROWS HIM IN HER FIREPLACE.

Gah, this novel pisses me off so much.

One last rant about this--every single character, side or otherwise, got their entire life story told in this novel. Like, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE LIFE STORY OF THE RICH CHICK OR THE ICE CREAM MAN OR THE LADY WHO OWNS THE COFFEE SHOP OR THE RANDOM KID WHOSE MOM RANDOMLY DIED. Honestly, the sheer amount of irrelevant detail in this novel was so offputting. I skimmed so much. This book was nearly 500 pages, but it could've easily been cut in half. We get whole chapters describing the golem working at the bakery and her coworker getting pregnant before marriage and all the customers who come in and all the shit that gets burnt and ohmygod it's so dulllllll.....

This story took the fantastic out of fantasy and made the dullest thing ever. Fantasy should be magical and haunting and wondrous and spectacular and colorful! This book felt like those persisting hazy, groggy, rainy days where all your joints ache and you want to just go back to bed. *throws book out window*

So overall: great premise, horrible storytelling, extremely dull and slow-paced. Nothing about the ending was satisfying or something that would stick in my mind or make me think or anything (other than "Thank god this book is finally over!").

Ugh, I feel like such a hater since apparently everyone on goodreads loved this. *cringes* I mean, it's a very quiet, peaceful book, if anything. If for some reason you had the inclination to experience 1800s New York for almost 500 pages of excruciating detail, you might enjoy this. I read for story, for lovable, fascinating characters and plot twists and getting my heartstrings pulled. This book didn't do that. Probably the best thing about this book is the cover (it's actually really pretty with shiny gold letters).

2/5 stars