It would be impossible in this space to do justice to Wecker’s humongous research into golems and jinnis and what lower Manhattan was like before World War I, but, suffice it to say, she has done her homework. And in Helene Wecker’s charming, albeit way too long, first novel, “The Golem and the Jinni,” their relationship is tested by a megalomaniacal Bedouin wizard, the golem’s evil creator, and all the enticements that Manhattan can offer a couple of curious immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. After all, a golem is a monster made of clay - the cool earth - and a jinni is a creature born of fire. You think a relationship is complicated when a woman is from Venus and a man is from Mars? Trust me, that’s a piece of cake compared with the hurdles that a modest golem and a mercurial jinni face when they fall in love.
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