Her entry begins:
I've been in a weird reading space for the past month or so, the kind where I have a hard time settling. I'll pick up a book and then give it up as not quite right, when the truth is that it's perfectly fine and I'm the problem. I'm glad that I managed to read Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional before the malaise set in. Wood's protagonist is an unnamed Australian woman who, in the throes of burnout, decides to visit a shabby quasi-convent near the village where she grew up. The next thing the reader knows, she's left her husband and her job and moved in permanently. She's not a nun, or at all religious. She doesn't even...[read on]About The Gates of Midnight, from the publisher:
The long-awaited final installment in the award-winning, bestselling Golem and the Jinni trilogy.Visit Helene Wecker's website.
At the beginning of The Hidden Palace, the second book in Helene Wecker’s Golem and Jinni trilogy, Ahmad the jinni travels to Syria with the copper flask that holds the captured wizard Yehudah Schaalman. There in the desert he buries the flask for all time… or so he thinks.
In The Gates of Midnight, the riveting conclusion to the saga of the Golem and the Jinni, it’s 1930 and three decades have passed since Schaalman’s defeat.Chava the golem quietly tends to her house and garden in Brooklyn, hoping to create a refuge for other magical beings. Meanwhile, Ahmad has found employment as an architect in Chicago, helping to build its towering skyline above the prairie.
But all is not well in the desert. Schaalman has managed to trick an unsuspecting passerby into digging up the flask, and now it passes from hand to hand as the wizard possesses his victims -- first a French soldier traveling to New York, then a small-time mobster -- all in an effort to get to Chava, the only one who can release him from his prison.
Meanwhile others are gravitating to New York as well: Ahmad, who has lost his job following the 1929 stock market crash; the mysterious Thomas Beshara, a riveter on the rising Empire State Building, who also has hidden ties to Chava and Ahmad; and Kreindel Altschul, who still grieves her own destroyed golem Yossele. Does the reluctant Kreindel hold the key to saving Chava from Schaalman’s revenge? Will Schaalman succeed in escaping the flask, binding Chava to his will, and re-enslaving Ahmad? Or can they find a way to finally defeat him and free themselves from his power? An earth-shaking finale to the brilliant trilogy.
Writers Read: Helene Wecker (June 2013).
The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.
Writers Read: Helene Wecker.
--Marshal Zeringue
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