The Hidden Palace

In my review of The Golem and the Jinni, I opined that with such a superior debut, Helene Wecker demonstrated that she was an enchanting and skilled storyteller. And if that work was any indication, this could be the beginning of a brilliant new voice in speculative fiction. I said that I was looking forward to whatever came next.

Like most readers, I reckon I wasn't the only one shocked by the fact that we had to wait for eight years for this sequel. Although I remembered it fondly, I gradually forgot most details about The Golem and the Jinni. When The Hidden Palace was announced, I was quite excited. But I realized that I had forgotten almost everything about the plot and the characters. So much so that I wondered if it was a good idea to dive into this novel without rereading the first one.

Thankfully, the author and her editor likely realized that it would be so for a great chunk of Wecker's readership and steps were taken to make sure that we are brought up to speed so as to not feel loss when we revisit Ahmad and Chava and the rest of the supporting cast. So there is no need to reread The Golem and the Jinni per se, though I wish I'd had time to do so. Even if I believe I was able to enjoy the book as much as Wecker wanted to, I get the feeling that I did miss some of the nuances that a reread would have allowed me to appreciate even more.

Here's the blurb:

In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I-- the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni--Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they'll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human--just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined--but they're not yet certain of what they mean to each other.

Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who's been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele--not knowing that she's about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart--especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

As was the case with its predecessor, the most wonderful facet of The Hidden Palace is how the author managed to capture the nuances and textures of the turn of the century New York City and the Middle East. Similar to how Carlos Ruiz Zafón did it with Barcelona in The Shadow of the Wind and its sequels, Helene Wecker makes NYC and various Middle Eastern locales come alive in extraordinary fashion. There is a wealth of historical details, some important and others mundane, woven into the story and the minutiae of it all makes for another beautifully atmospheric novel.

In The Golem and the Jinni, it took a while for both Ahmad and Chava to come into their own. It was the supporting cast, as motley a group of men and women as they come, that made both Ahmad and Chava come alive as characters. Their interactions with the world around them forged their personalities and helped make them the endearing duo that they soon become. There are many familiar faces such as Arbeely, Anna, the Radzins, Maryam, and others who appear in this sequel. And though Ahmad and Chava take center stage once more, The Hidden Palace features more protagonists whose lives/storylines will influence those of our unlikely duo. Kreindel, an orphaned Jewish girl, has a particularly touching POV. It took a while for Toby's perspective (Anna's son) to make sense and the same goes for Sophia Winston's, but both play important roles in the resolution of this novel. Once again, it's been a long time since I've encountered such a delightful yet disparate cast of characters.

Though The Hidden Palace takes place more than a decade following the events of The Golem and the Jinni, I loved how Ahmad and Chava's plight remain no different from that of most of the newly arrived immigrants around them. They remain strangers in a strange land, trying to forge a new life for themselves. The fact that she doesn't seem to age forces Chava to change her identity, leaving everything behind to start over once more. Helene Wecker possesses a deft human touch which allows her to charge this novel with rare emotional depth. It's impossible not to feel for those characters, no matter what happens to them.

The pace is slow-moving throughout. The Hidden Palace is a meandering sort of work, one that doesn't seem to have a definite story arc. It follows the lives of Ahmad, Chava, Kreindel, Sophia, Toby, and a number of other characters, seemingly without rhyme or reason. And yet, though the rhythm is slow and nothing much appears to be taking place, the book is never a chore to read. Wecker brings it all together near the end, with an ending that promises more to come.

We can only hope that we won't have to wait for so long for the third installment.

The final verdict: 8/10

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