The Golem and the Jinni
He's an adolescent jinni, proud, impulsive, and selfish. She's a newborn golem, intelligent and hard-working, but scared. When they both find themselves transplanted to Manhattan at the turn of the twentieth century, they need to figure out how to carve out places for themselves. And when they meet, a fulfilling, but rocky friendship forms. Helene Wecker's debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni , is just lovely. It deals with immigration and lower Manhattan at the turn of the century, when people are arriving from all over the world and carving out neighborhoods for their communities. It asks interesting questions about identity, about how to balance individuality with community, about religion and human nature. The narrative winds its way through the first year the golem and the jinni spend in New York. They arrive separately, though on the same day. And while they are kept apart for a while, as Wecker explores the Jewish community on the Lower East Side and...