Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Currently reading: The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker. This is the sequel to The Golem and the Jinni and it's also fantastic. It picks up where the last book left off, as the characters muddle their way through history, including the sinking of the Titanic, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the suffrage movement, and World War I, and introducing new characters whose lives were upended in the fallout from the first book. It's intricately researched and engrossing and also a massive brick that I'm about halfway through.

One of the things that I find particularly interesting about it is how risky it is compared to the vast majority of fantasy books that I've read lately. It's meandering, it is almost as wide as it is tall, it headhops not just between scenes but within paragraphs, it has about 7 or 8 POV characters, and it crosses multiple genres. It's everything that I've heard makes a book unmarketable, and it's a stronger story for it.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

I got to interview Helene about the book for a bookstore event and found out about all the subplots that wound up not making it in, including one where the little boy from the first book goes back to Syria after his mother dies returns to the US as a young adult and opens a movie theater. (She wrote hundreds of pages of this and then it didn't make it in. I think maybe the THIRD book should have that -- I mean, he could totally have opened his movie theater in another city.)

It's here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YZz0QBW_A0

(I wanted to know how she'd decided which historical events to include and which to gloss over. There were some she clearly HAD to include, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire -- like, I had literally looked up the date and compared it to The Golem and the Djinni to see how far out it was, because it's an event that's so central to the memories of the Lower East Side and the community Chava lived in. Helene's decision to have a fictional, much less memorable fire happen early on, and then take Chava out of the neighborhood entirely on the day of the Triangle fire, makes a lot of sense.)

[sabotabby]

Oooh awesome. I shall check it out.

[smhwpf]

Ooh, need to buy!

[sabotabby]

Oooh, you would love this series.

[mistersmearcase]

7 or 8 POV characters and lots of "headhopping" sounds exhausting!

[sabotabby]

You would think, but it's not.

[radiantfracture]

It's meandering, it is almost as wide as it is tall, it headhops not just between scenes but within paragraphs, it has about 7 or 8 POV characters, and it crosses multiple genres.

You give me hope.

[sabotabby]

Same. Not that I have a 10th of her talent but I want to also be free from tight little genre boxes.

[kartoffeltorte]

Sounds good.

[sabotabby]

it is!

[kartoffeltorte]

🙂