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Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML: "Richly nuanced and beautiful. . . . An immersive and magical tale of loneliness, love, and finding hope." (Buzzfeed) "A layered novel of many complex characters...To keep their worlds safe, Chava and Ahmad must access both their greatest supernatural powers and their deepest human impulses." (Historical Novels Review) In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War Iâ?? the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinniâ??Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world. Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they'll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as humanâ??just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwinedâ??but they're not yet certain of what they mean to each other. Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who's been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yosseleâ??not knowing that she's about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector. Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apartâ??especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings lik… (more)
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This book, melding magical realism with historical fiction, continues the story that began with the 2013 novel, The Golem and The Jinni. I reread that book before taking on the sequel, and although it probably wasn’t
The story takes place for the most part in Manhattan, a place which the author clearly knows thoroughly - even in its historic aspects - and loves. It is set at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Most of the characters are the same as in the previous novel, although there are a few important additions.
It's an immigrant story in a way, about two very different beings who ended up in the melting pot of New York in 1899. One is a golem, and one a jinni.
In Jewish folklore, a golem is a human-like figure made out of clay and brought to life by esoteric magic known only to a select few adept at Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah. Golems – unnaturally strong and unquestionably obedient to their creators - were said to have been created from time to time in olden days to help defend Jews from anti-Semitic attacks.
In Wecker’s first book, a Prussian man who could not find a wife went to an old man with reputed occult knowledge to request that a golem be made for him to serve as a wife. He packed up the golem and set out for New York. He died en route, however, and the golem was left to fend for herself. Rabbi Avram Meyer, a kindly rabbi, saw the golem, recognized what she was, and took her in to protect her, naming her Chava.
Meanwhile, a parallel story concerned the unexpected release of a jinni from an old copper flask in a tinsmith shop in New York's Little Syria. Jinnis (or genies) are the products of Middle Eastern and Muslim mythology, and are said to be spirits made of fire. Many, however, can make themselves look like humans. Boutros Arbeely, the tinsmith who inadvertently released the jinni, who was in the guise of a handsome young man, vowed to protect him much as the rabbi did with Chava, and named him Ahmad.
It is only a matter of time before this woman of earth and man of fire meet, and realize they have more in common than might at first be apparent. As they navigated through their unexpected lives in America, they also get to know each other, helping each other to understand what it means to be human, and maybe even what it means to love.
The sequel begins a year later, with Chava working at a bakery and Ahmad working at the tinsmith’s. Neither Ahmad nor Chava sleep, so they use their time in the evenings to walk together through the streets and on the rooftops of Manhattan. They have a close relationship, although one characterized by a great deal of philosophical disagreement. They are very different in some ways. The jinni muses that Chava had a prudish streak, was serious-minded, and rarely laughed. He thought “She would make a terrible jinniyeh.”
Ahmad is so good at using his inner fire to shape metals that the small tinsmith shop in Little Syria in Manhattan is now Arbeely & Ahmad, All Metals.
Ahmad lives like a human now, having given up not only the jinn language but jinn ways:
“He followed rules and conventions, as far as he deemed himself reasonably able. He guarded his speech, and checked his desires, and tried, at all times, to remember that his actions had consequences.” Chava too, was making her way as a human as well as she could. Both have to be very careful however not to reveal their great strength and their inhuman characteristics. In fact, when people at the bakery notice that Chava never seems to age, she knows she has to leave even though she loves the job. She enrolls in school for “Domestic Sciences” to become a teacher.
Sophia Winston, a young girl with whom the jinni had a brief relationship, is now off traveling through the Middle East try to find a cure for her constant lack of warmth since her affair with Ahmad.
Rabbi Meyer has died, and Rabbi Lev Altschul took over his collection of mystical books. He becomes obsessed with making a golem himself, eventually letting his young daughter Kreindel help him. The two are alone; the Rabbi’s wife died years earlier. The outcome of his efforts play a significant role in the story.
Complicating matters, Yehudah Schaalman, the villainous man who created Chava, has come to New York to find the golem and find the key, if he could, to eternal life. He has no moral compass, and perfectly willing to do all the damage necessary to attain his goal.
As the story progresses and the years pass, we see all the characters gradually come together in a momentous denouement, taking place sixteen years after the golem and the jinni first arrived in Manhattan.
Evaluation: I loved this sequel, and enjoyed following the clever threads woven by the author to flesh out other lives and make them intersect with those of Chava and Ahmad. It is not at all clear if they will survive, and in what state, and how the others will fare in their wake. Altogether a satisfying story!
I would have given this solid 5 stars had the story compelled me along with a little more urgency. I enjoyed the story, enjoyed reading it, but I found myself all too often putting it aside for something else. These two books should not have taken me a month to read each, yet they did. I don't have a satisfactory solution to this problem. The books are good, bordering on great, just not much fun to read in parts. Regardless, this is at least a half-step up from the first book, and if there is a third en route (in perhaps another 8 years) I suspect she'll hit the bullseye and give me the 5-star book I'm hoping for.
I loved the ending, by the way. If anybody is contemplating putting it down mid-read because it's moving too slow, I whole-heartedly recommend getting to the end. It was deeply moving and satisfying.
When it comes down to it, it's very hard to say what this story is about, and I think that's also what left me feeling a bit dissatisfied. Reading it was enjoyable, but events just kind of meandered along as we follow not only Chava and Ahmad, but also Sophia Winston, the woman whom Ahmad had seduced and left cold (literally) in the first book, and the orphan girl Kreindel over the course of 15 or so years. It was frustrating to have a narrative pulling me in so many disparate directions at once, and I thought the way everything came together at the end was a little heavy handed.
Characters from the previous book as well as new ones get caught up in the Jinni and Golem's lives, including the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi who has secrets of her own, the son of Chava's friend Anna whohas been haunted by a nightmare since he was a baby, and an exiled female jinni searching for the iron-bound jinni of legend. Wecker weaves their stories together and brings them to a satisfying ending that is also a beginning. I hope she writes more with these characters I've come to love.