New York, 1899.
A merchant orders a golem to be his wife. He barely has time to wake the golem before he dies of appendicitis, on board a ship to New York. The golem is left masterless and alone in the strange city.
A tinsmith in Little Syria, also in New York, accidentally lets out a djinni from a copper flask where the djinni had been imprisoned centuries earlier by a sorcerer. The djinni is still bound to human form and unable to access most of his powers.
The two now struggle to find a place for themselves in this city full of humans. They both wear human-shaped bodies, but neither of them feels at home among humans.
The golem was made to serve and obey. Now that she has no master – whose wishes she would fulfil before he even utters them – she is buffeted by the wishes and desires of everyone around her. She is lost, fearful, alone. She is stronger than humans, tireless, but also very aware that if people knew what she is, they’d be so frightened of her that they would destroy her.
The djinni is the opposite. He used to be the master of everything he could see, flying freely across the Syrian desert, constructing fantastical palaces on a whim, entering people’s dreams. Now he can do none of that, and he chafes at his limitations. And like the golem, he cannot let anyone know what he is.
Neither of them needs sleep. They both look for something to fill their empty waking nights with, in order to not go mad from boredom, and this is what causes them to meet. They recognize that the other is something not-human, and they are intrigued.
The golem is newly made, innocent and ignorant. The djinni is hundreds of years old.
The golem is feminine servility. The djinni is masculine arrogance.
The golem is earth, heavy and stable. The djinni is fire, flighty and sizzling.
Both are forced to live in a human body, to live among humans and follow human conventions. With time, pretending to be human makes each one more human. The golem learns to want things for herself, and to dare to feel. The djinni learns to care about humans, and to want things for others. They learn to make friends.
There is a plot behind all this, and it’s interesting and well-crafted and comes together nicely in the end. Perhaps there is a touch too much action and excitement in the end for my taste – it doesn’t quite fit in with the more moderate pacing of the rest of the book. I think I could have read this book even if there was no plot and no denouement at all. I would be happy to just follow these two around and look inside their heads while they figure themselves out.
There are plenty of supporting characters, whom I also enjoyed getting to know. Some reviewers complain that the author spends too much time on their back stories, when the characters only fulfil a very brief role in the main story. I loved those parts. The bit players are essential, and for me, this was a way of honouring their importance.
The writing style is uncomplicated, unassuming, quietly elegant. The tone is warm-hearted: people may argue and disagree and sometimes do stupid things but they’re all fundamentally decent and kind. It’s no light-hearted feel-good story, but definitely a hopeful one.
Altogether I enjoyed every aspect of this book.
Meanwhile, my browser’s spell check wants to correct “golem” to “google”. What an uncultured browser it is.