Books and Sensibility

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Historical Fiction

The Golem and The Jinni by Helene Wecker

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  • Release Date: April 23 , 2013
  • Pages: 496
  • Genre: Historical Urban Fantasy
  • Publisher: Harper

Hey, did you read Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus?  Did you fall all over the magical aspects, charming side characters and nonlinear narrative? Well, I did and if you need something to fill that hole I highly suggest TheGolem and The Jinni. I grabbed this off my library’s Overdrive after seeing so many people reading it on vacation and it was just my kind of book.

Drenched in Kabbalah and Arabic folklore Wecker’s debut novel  is the unlikely story of two creatures believed to exist only folklore finding their way in the immigrant neighborhoods of 1890’s  New York. 

The  Golem is a newborn woman made of earth, who is quickly abandoned as soon as she is bought to  life. Hiding out in the Jewish populated Lower East Side, her only solace is trying to meet the wants of others without revealing herself first.

Once free to roam the deserts of Syria, the Jinni is now selfish, arrogant creature made of fire and smoke, who is bound to human flesh, and has inexplicably awoken in New York City’s  Little Syria.

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Book Review : The Night Circus

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“The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”

– Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Synopsis : The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas, tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.

I figured The Night Circus would be a good read following Water For Elephants. While Water For Elephants deals with the metaphorical illusions of circus life,  The Night Cirus deals with the more fantastical and literal ones

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