Tag Archives: magical realism

Magic in Manhattan: The Golem and the Jinni

02 Monday Jan 2023

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Review: The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker
HarperCollins, 2013. 484 pp. $16

The year 1899 witnesses two occult events, unnoticed by ordinary folk but with great potential for mischief. A Polish businessman sets sail for New York with a female golem in a crate, a creature made of clay through Kabbalistic magic. But he dies during the voyage, leaving the golem, who knows nothing about life, to cope once the ship reaches its destination—she walks ashore and takes up residence on the Lower East Side. She’s a newborn adult with immense physical strength and an ability to hear unexpressed human thoughts and desires.

Mikuláš Aleš’s 1899 rendering of the golem which, according to legend, was created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in 16th-century Prague (courtesy http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje31/text06p.htm via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Meanwhile, blocks away, a tinsmith repairs an antique copper flask, unwittingly freeing the jinni trapped inside. A very different being, he’s lived for centuries, mostly in the Syrian Desert, and will probably live several more. And though he’s strong and quick, what sets him apart is the light he radiates and the warmth of his touch, which allows him to melt most metals, as the tinsmith soon discovers. But this jinni grants no one three wishes. He’s no slave and will fight hard against any attempt to change or modify his behavior.

The narrative of The Golem and the Jinni, besides telling the (somewhat) magical realist tale of how these two characters adjust to the New World—and whom they influence, and how—is much larger than that, wherein lies its charm. In vigorous, vivid prose, the novel explores what freedom, conscience, empathy, and pleasure mean to human existence, and how difficult it is to balance them.

The golem, who acquires the name Chava (via the Hebrew word for “life”) gets a job in a bakery, where she works like three women and tries hard to fit in, unnoticed. But she feels cursed by her gift of hearing what people would rather hide; a chorus of desire clamors in her head, and it seems to her that humans never stop wanting, especially what they can’t have. Aware of her terrifying strength and the need to act justly and carefully, Chava dares not let herself go, ever. What’s more, if an unscrupulous person ever learned her true identity and uttered the correct incantation, she’d be bound as slave to that master, likely for evil purposes.

By contrast, the jinni, called Ahmad, has no particular love for humans, sees nothing wrong with taking pleasure or profit where he may find it, and has little or no loyalty to anyone. Consequently, when he meets Chava, the two irritate each other no end, yet, as in the attraction of opposites, each realizes what the other represents and is curious. They seek each other’s company at night, because neither likes or needs to sleep, and there’s a lot of time to spend. So they take nocturnal walks, as with this excursion along the rooftops of Prince Street:

The rooftops were like a hidden thoroughfare, bustling with nighttime traffic. Men, women, and children came and went, running errands, passing information, or simply heading home. Workingmen in greased overalls held parliament around the rims of ash-barrels, their faces red and flickering. Boys idled in corners, eyes alert. The Golem caught the sense of borders being guarded, but the Jinni, it seemed, was a familiar face. Mostly their doubts were directed at herself: a strange woman, tall and clean and primly dressed. Some of the younger boys took her for a social worker, and hid in the shadows.

Naturally, there are complications; The Golem and the Jinni is an intricate book, maybe to a fault. There’s the rabbi who mentors Chava; the bakery; the social worker smitten by her; and the mysterious man-of-all-work who pretends to do his bidding but is really biding his time. You’ve also got the tinsmith; neighborhood characters like a physician turned ice-cream maker; a beautiful, young socialite; and Ahmad’s long back story in the Syrian Desert, often hard to distinguish from a dream—or, sometimes, to place accurately within the time frame of the novel.

Wecker’s rendering of the Lower East Side works well enough, but, though I get a sense of certain places or neighborhoods, the scenery sometimes feels more like a stage set than a lived-in place. I also note a few minor anachronisms, facets of life that didn’t yet exist in 1899, though would a few years later. The presentation of Jewish life stumbles in places—for instance, the rabbi doesn’t seem entirely rabbinical, and the bakery likely would have closed during Passover—but again, not enough to question authenticity.

Nevertheless, despite occasional obscurities, particularly where the narrative’s disparate parts fail to fit together seamlessly, I recommend The Golem and the Jinni. It’s a wonderful tale, full of passion, adventure, and inquiry, told with imaginative flair.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Holocaust Superwoman: The World That We Knew

22 Monday Aug 2022

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Review: The World That We Knew, by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster, 2019. 365 pp. $28

In spring 1941, those Jews still left in Berlin live from hand to mouth, managing each day as best they can. But Hanni Kohn, who recognizes her end is near, determines that her twelve-year-old daughter, Lea, will escape. Hanni visits the household of a famous rabbi, seeking a miracle, but he’s not to be disturbed. It’s his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ettie, who agrees to help, and the task is most unusual and occult: to create a golem, who’ll protect Lea and see her to Paris, where she has distant cousins.

The golem, a centuries-old figure in Jewish mysticism and folklore, is a creature made of dust or clay with a human appearance, no soul or feeling, yet with physical powers craved by a people who live in peril. Sixteenth-century Prague provides a famous example of the legend, which Mitchell James Kaplan borrowed for his novel the Fifth Servant. But you can also link the golem to 1930s superheroes, fighters for freedom, and the rule of law in a world tearing itself apart.

Hoffman, however, has a slightly different game in mind:

The figure had cooled into the shape of a woman. She was tall, with long legs and a well-proportioned body. Her hair was flowing and dark, the color of damp soil. The form had been given ruach, the breath of bones, the life force that animates every creature on earth. Its lack of a soul would allow it to perceive the spiritual aspects of the world that no human could ever know or see. Good and evil appeared in their truest forms to a golem, death was easy to perceive and the spirits of the dead could be summoned.

Aptly named Ava, for she can speak to birds, she’s tasked with guiding Lea, Ettie, and her sister, Marta across the border, then to Paris. But Ava’s existence is an affront to God, and as such, must not outlast her usefulness. Once the war ends, she must die.

The narrative therefore relies on magical realism, Hoffman’s trademark, a genre I’ve never taken to. Yet The World That We Knew is a beautiful, passionate novel about life and death, love as miracle and sacrifice, and the nature of grief. It’s also a page-turner.

Just as the escape fails to go as planned for all parties involved, reaching Paris offers less shelter than the refugees hoped. After all, the Germans have invaded, and the French police vigorously help them round up Jews for deportation. Further, the cousins want no part of the refugees, though the younger son, Julien, falls for Lea.

Consequently, “no — and furthermore” abides in these pages, and though the increasing cast of characters has more than its fair share of luck, they suffer losses too. The realism has a magical component but also a satisfyingly hard edge.

Two women in Paris, June 1942, wearing the yellow star that marks them as Jews (courtesy German Federal Archive,
Bild 183-N0619-506, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

At times, the expository storytelling style bothers me, in which Hoffman explains the action. I want to be allowed closer, to be shown what’s happening. Similarly, the historical passages that teach the Holocaust in France sit wrong; they read like lectures and occasionally err in surpassing the knowledge people had at the time, particularly the precise destination of the trains full of deportees and what would happen to them once they got there.

Nevertheless, I understand Hoffman’s temptation to impart this information. I grew up conversant with the Holocaust, partly because my parents came of age during the war, an exposure that today’s generations lack. The author apparently wishes to redress that.

Fortunately, around the time the refugees leave Paris, the narrative kicks into a higher gear, and when it does, the storytelling shifts as well, showing more and explaining less. My favorite character is Ava, who comes to appreciate what life is, why humans cling to it, and its advantages and disadvantages. I like her transformation from unfeeling clay to sensibility very much. With evil pervading the world, it takes courage even to see what’s worthwhile, let alone to act accordingly, the problem the human characters face.

But that issue touches Ava too, in her own way, not least in her relationship with a heron, with whom she dances when his migration flight brings him through France. Also, she has a skill that comes in handy: her ability to perceive the black-robed angel of death, Azriel, as he hovers, waiting his chance to inscribe a victim’s name, a ledger in his hands. This image will stay with me; I think it comes from folklore.

As my regular readers know, I’m particular about Holocaust novels and won’t touch those in which Jews seem mere historical artifacts, depicted for narrative convenience. I’m pleased to say that The World That We Knew swept me away for its moral evocations, characterizations, and sheer imagination.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Antebellum Guerrilla War: The Water Dancer

13 Monday Dec 2021

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Review: The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Random House/OneWorld, 2019. 403 pp. $28

Hiram Walker, born a slave in Virginia in some indeterminate year, barely remembers his mother, torn from him and sold west when he was little. Brought up by Thena, a hard woman who has suffered similar losses and who wastes no words in expressing feelings, Hiram thinks he’s lucky but isn’t sure.

That presentiment grows even stronger when Howell Walker, their master and tobacco planter, owns Hiram as his son — sort of. Hiram become servant to his half-brother, Maynard, and receives some education from a tutor. As Hiram’s father relies on him more and more, the young slave fantasizes that he’ll be allowed one day to run the plantation, as if he were white. The other slaves, though proud of his gifts and accomplishments, which include a prodigious memory and eloquent storytelling, warn him to keep his head on straight.

It’s excellent advice but impossible to follow. One night, a drunken Maynard drives his carriage into the river. The white man drowns, and the Black man emerges, though he doesn’t know how, except that strange visions seem to have steered him to safety. That event changes Hiram’s life forever.

Portrait, 1852, of William Wells Brown, who escaped slavery in Missouri in 1834 and became a noted abolitionist author. His novel, Clotel, 1853, was the first published by a Black American (courtesy Project Gutenberg, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

From this complex, multilayered premise emerges a compelling though uneven novel that examines in minute detail the roots and branches of race prejudice. The narrative needs no timetable, save the implied pre-Civil War era, for though the laws have changed greatly, racial attitudes haven’t. As such, The Water Dancer feels almost like an allegory, with a dash of magic thrown in.

Normally, I avoid mixing magic and realism, but Coates provides a brilliant rationale for anything not strictly true. Hiram’s memory and storytelling make him a superb candidate to learn and practice a mysterious power capable of setting him or others free. This potential interests the Underground, a resistance organization pledged to destroy slavery from within. That effort will have its costs.

So there’s much tension from the get-go, and Coates’s prose style reaches lyrical heights. Many passages illustrate Hiram’s state of mind while elucidating a theme, as with this one, in which he discovers the pride in being Black that slavery and subservience have denied him:

I looked over and watched as the other colored men along the fence shouted and laughed with still others working the stables. And watching this silently, as was my way, I marveled at the bonds between us — the way we shortened our words, or spoke, sometimes, with no words at all, the shared memories of corn-shuckings, of hurricanes, of heroes who did not live in books, but in our talk; an entire world of our own, hidden away from them, and to be part of that world, I felt even then, was to be in on a secret, a secret that was in you.

The Water Dancer is a vital, important book, and I urge you to read it, though I have reservations. The first half takes off like a rocket, borne aloft through passion that rises off the pages, a sharp sense of the physical, and that gorgeous prose. But then the narrative seems to go into orbit—a holding pattern, if you will—and the story loses momentum. Events that Hiram believes accidental or from his doing will turn out to have been ordained. Not only does that wear thin with repetition and challenge the narrative’s credibility, you get the impression that Coates is manipulating his characters.

To be fair, I like how memory and bearing witness shape the path to freedom, if not define it altogether; in that way, Hiram’s examination of his past makes total sense. I also like how each revelation resets Hiram’s wishes and strategies for living, which pairs his internal journey with his external one. All good novelists aim for that. Yet at times Hiram’s reflections seem forced, too incremental to matter, even abstract, like tiny essays Coates hides within his narrative, but which stick out anyway. The storytelling in these scenes exacerbates the tendentious, contrived approach, because some unfold with characters narrating to others or lecturing—and I, as reader, feel lectured too.

That said, Coates asks crucial questions. The Underground, though sworn to a single cause, attracts people with different goals, which means Hiram and his colleagues must constantly balance the needs of the movement with those of the slaves they mean to serve. Naturally, circumstances keep changing. Every political and social movement has to weather that difficulty, so this is true to life.

But Coates goes one better, splitting his dilemma into even finer parts, exploring where freedom lies exactly, and what actions lead to it. Does escape from the “coffin” of slavery suffice (an image that appears frequently), or does traveling into free territory accomplish nothing by itself? What about the family that remains behind, the love without which the absence of chains is only partially fulfilling?

The Water Dancer is a profound book whose story rises above the flaws in its execution.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Albania Bleeds: Chronicle in Stone

19 Monday Nov 2018

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Review: Chronicle in Stone, by Ismail Kadare
Translated from the Albanian by Arshi Pipa
Edited by David Bellos
Arcade, 2011. 301 pp. $18

A nameless, near-sighted young boy living in a small Albanian city near the Greek border grows up in the late 1930s. To call him an unreliable narrator would be incorrect, for he sees everything unfold around him with great precision — his relatively cushioned existence during the Italian annexation of spring 1939, the world war that soon follows, and numerous occupations, as the city changes hands.

Rather, his myopia is emotional, for he understands little or nothing of what goes on around him, which his overactive imagination turns inside out. And that could not be otherwise, when, for some reason never explained, he receives no schooling, and the only perspective he hears comes mostly from elderly relatives and neighborhood widows, whose constant preoccupation is sorcery. Every evil occurrence, or even those actually benign, are explained by malevolent magic, whether it’s a boy who starts wearing eyeglasses — unthinkable! — or a stolen kiss on the street. A young woman is said to sprout a beard; witchcraft must surely be responsible, a sign that the world will end soon (a familiar refrain). Burn your nail clippings and the hair in your hairbrushes, or the witches will target you.

Italian invasion of Albania, April 1939 (courtesy Axis History Forum via Wikimedia Commons)

So Kadare’s naïve narrator may be forgiven for wanting to visit the slaughterhouse, because it promises entertainment, or for admiring the aerodrome the Italians build. He ascribes different characters to the warplanes, as if they were human, and seems not to reckon on what it means that they bomb other places, though he soon finds out what that feels like.

I’ve never much cared for magical realism, and Chronicle in Stone skates close to my sensibilities. But as a metaphorical tale about hatred and divisiveness, the novel packs a wallop — even without a plot. Several characters try to break out of their roles and suffer for it, and the boy comes to learn something of what pleasure and evil mean. But I think the real power — and story, such as it is — comes from Kadare’s painstaking account of persistent animosities that seemingly arise out of nothing for what looks different or potentially threatening, such as the alleged beard that will end the world. It’s a short walk from these prejudices to the violence that grips the city (read: Albania), or, for that matter, juxtaposing a jaunt to the slaughterhouse and a world war.

As with other highly metaphorical novels, the prose has a lot of work to do, and Kadare’s is flawless. This early passage conveys the boy’s imagination and fascination with violent destiny:

I pictured the countless drops rolling down the sloping roof, hurtling to earth to turn to mist that would rise again in the high, white sky. Little did they know that a clever trap, a tin gutter, awaited them on the eaves. Just as they were about to make the leap from roof to ground, they suddenly found themselves caught in the narrow pipe with thousands of companions, asking “Where are we going, where are they taking us?” Then, before they could recover from that mad race, they plummeted into a deep prison, the great cistern of our house.
Here ended the raindrops’ life of joy and freedom.

Kadare captures the stubbornness of people who, for months on end, speak only of a select few topics — you know what they are — take absurd pride in an antiaircraft gun that never hits anything, or expect corruption everywhere. Does empathy even exist? Every once in a while, someone talks sense, but you can be certain no one will listen, to the point that the reader has to laugh. So in a way, the main thrust of Chronicle in Stone is comic, darkly so, which is why having a half-blind, ignorant narrator makes perfect sense.

I can’t say this book is for everyone; if you open it and look for a plot, a climax, or a crescendo, you’ll be disappointed. And yet, this slight novel is worth your time, and the pages will fly by.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

An Irresistible Tale: The Hummingbird’s Daughter

17 Monday Oct 2016

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Review: The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea
Little, Brown, 2006. 495 pp. $15

This beguiling novel defies first appearances, and a lucky thing for me, or I wouldn’t have read it.

Set in late nineteenth-century Mexico, The Hummingbird’s Daughter tells the early life of Teresa, the so-called Saint of Cabora. Born the illegitimate, half-Indian child of a well-to-do rancher, Teresa shows remarkable aptitude from a young age. She learns to ride a horse better than most men, to read, to dispute, and to remain serene in the face of insult, all of which appalls and enthralls her natural father, Don Tomás, who–extraordinarily–welcomes her into his house. She also studies with Huila, a salty, old herbal and spiritual healer, eventually surpassing and supplanting her; that too appalls and amazes Don Tomás, who worries what will happen. The young girl travels to far-off lands in her dreams, converses with God, delivers babies, and develops a large following, which, as Don Tomás has predicted, can come to no good.

José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, who ruled Mexico for thirty-five years,, photographed in 1910; this novel portrays him, from afar, as a corrupt, malignant figure (Courtesy Aurelio Escobar Castellanos Archive, via Wikimedia Commons)

José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, as he appeared in 1910, ruled Mexico for thirty-five years; this novel portrays him, from afar, as a corrupt, malignant figure (Courtesy Aurelio Escobar Castellanos Archive, via Wikimedia Commons)

As a rule, I avoid magical realism. As far as I’m concerned, One Hundred Years of Solitude is aptly titled, because those are the conditions I’d need before I could finish it. My teeth hurt if I have to read how the mystically gifted sweep away evil merely by waving a hand, and how a popular uprising forestalls the vengeance that would ordinarily result. Nor do I care much for macho fantasies in which beautiful women fall into an unscrupulous seducer’s arms without having to be asked twice, and that their love either reforms him, makes the earth move, or both. And much as I detest various aspects of modern life, I groan whenever I come across a narrative based on “the wisdom of the ancients,” as if peccadilloes of the past like witch-burnings, serfdom, or endemic smallpox never happened, or that our contemporary malaise wouldn’t last ten minutes if we could only summon up pseudo-profundities said to be lost to time.

Nevertheless, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, which skates parallel to that last category, is a terrific book. Urrea wins over this jaundiced reviewer for several reasons, chief among them his refusal to let his theme obscure reality. Teresa, or Teresita, as she’s usually known, may be called a saint, a title she dislikes and has never sought, but that only increases her burden to prove herself. Thousands of people flock to receive her healing powers, imputing to her motives, methods, and sympathies that she doesn’t possess. The established church calls her a heretic; the politicians, a traitor who preaches revolution. Men despise her for being a woman beyond their control, even as they dream of raping her. Those who fashion themselves of European extraction hate her as an Indian. Consequently, not only does Teresita fail to bring evil to a standstill–never her intention, anyway–everyone sees in her what they wish, using her for their own purposes. Naturally, the poor young woman tires of it all.

Only vigorous, unbridled prose can carry a narrative like this. Urrea’s grasp of biblical phrasing, Spanish cadences, and florid, earthy expression make this novel a delight to read:

Crows, attracted by the stink and the tumult, spied on them from the treetops, hopping along from tree to tree, peeking out from between the ragged leaves. And buzzards, attracted by the flapping crows, hypnotized by all the wandering meat beneath them, circled and dreamed of putrescence and death, the deliciousness of rot. And unknown and unseen, to the north of the trail only five miles away from the rancho, three dead men grinned under the soil, shot by Rurales for their scant gold and their boots, buried hastily and half-eaten by beetles and voles, tunneling wildcats and foxes, these three leathery travelers vibrated underground as the people passed, shook in their paltry graves as if they were laughing, giggling, their yellow mouths wide in toothy hilarity.

But besides casual violence, lust, and the hardness of life, there’s humor too. I laughed at the burro who dreamed of kicking the children entertaining themselves at its expense, at Don Tomás’s seemingly endless supply of friendly insults, and the various harmless obsessions that grip the characters. The laughter helps see to it that events and actions in The Hummingbird’s Daughter are seldom just one thing but many, depending on how they’re viewed, and Urrea has the sense not to push too hard. For instance, Teresita learns to remember always that she comes from the earth and belongs to it (the essential difference between herself and the corrupt, Westernized church and government). Yet she also comes to appreciate modern conveniences that Don Tomás’s engineer friend, Lauro Aguirre, has installed in the main house. So the reverence for old ways gets tempered, somewhat, or at least makes room for certain pleasures.

And speaking of pleasures, that’s what The Hummingbird’s Daughter is, a rollicking tale in which the many pages slide swiftly by.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.