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Fantastic new novel

The Golem and the Jinni LP: A Novel by Helene Wecker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is fantastic [in both senses of the word]: wonderfully creative and unique plot, fascinating characters, good writing, and best of all, a satisfying and happy ending. I'm not going to detail the story - other reviewers have done that - but I must say that as a historical novelist whose latest books deal with Jewish magic Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter, I am very demanding when reading other novels in my genre, and this one surpassed my expectations. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Maggie Anton



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Slavery in RHD

When I speak to book groups about RAV HISDA’S DAUGHTER, which I do both in person and by speakerphone or skype, there are certain questions that seem to come up regularly – questions that would only occur to someone who has read the book. One of them is about my depiction of slavery, both in my heroine’s household and in her world.

This novel, and its sequel ENCHANTRESS, takes place in 3rd-Century Babylonia and the Galilee of Eretz Israel. Both Rome and Persia had millions of slaves among their populations; some estimates as high as 25% in the Roman Empire. For the most part, there were no such thing as 'hired' servants, only slaves, although some Roman slaves were so wealthy and powerful that they had their own slaves.

The Talmud makes it clear that some rabbis back then had slaves and some were slaves [usually scribes and secretaries to other rabbis]. Persia imposed a tax on individuals older than 12, and those who couldn’t pay it became the slaves of those who paid it for them. The Jewish community considered it praiseworthy for wealthy Jews to pay the taxes of poor ones, for this way the poor would not become slaves to Persian non-Jews. Of course nobody seemed to consider that the rich could just give charity to the poor to prevent them from being enslaved.

Quite a few of my readers were dismayed to see that Rav Hisda’s family were slaveowners and how they treated their slaves, which was actually fairly decently compared to others. But I was determined that my heroine would not have 21st century views in a 3rd century body, even if I wrote about her doing and thinking things that I personally found upsetting. I was also determined not to cover up or ignore this aspect of her culture, which so many other historical novelists seem to do by either calling slaves 'servants' or ignoring their existence altogether.

And don't even get me started on the position of the average woman back then, which was only a step up from slavery - either to her father or her husband. I will only say that a female slave in a wealthy household like my heroine’s would undoubtedly have considered herself better off than a poor man’s wife.

happy birthday

♪♫♪♪♫ Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64? ♪♫♪♪♫
I turned 64 today and Google surprised me with a special screen when I logged in.

When I clicked on it, it said "Happy Birthday, Maggie." I wonder how the NSA intends to help me celebrate.

Spending time

Part promoting my books and part learning from readers and other authors, I am a member of several online groups on Yahoo, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. Now that ENCHANTRESS has been accepted, I have more time to spend on these websites; plus it’s time to start changing gears from writing to promotion. Some of the discussions are fascinating, particularly those of Book Marketing and Authors Circle groups on LinkedIn and the Historical Fictionista group on Goodreads.

Recently I saw this question on Authors Circle: “What Do You Spend More Time on? As a writer, do you spend more time, thinking about what to write, gathering materials for writing, or actually writing?” Here is the comment I posted.

As a historical novelist, I have to spend a huge amount of time doing research before I even start writing. In the case of my most recent novel, which takes place in 3rd-century Babylonia, I spent a year on research before writing a word. But then for me, research is the fun part; writing is the hard work. I keep doing research until the novel is finished. Thinking about what I'm going to write is my favorite activity. I generally do this at night, or early in the morning during those half-awake times when my creative brain takes charge. Sometimes I amaze myself at the scenes I imagine.

Now that I'm on my 6th novel, writing the first draft takes much more time than editing. However I am published by Penguin, so their editorial staff does a good deal of work that I am spared. I actually enjoy the editing process, seeing how my story improves with each new revision. Truth be told, I probably spend just as much time on marketing as writing, even with my publisher's formidable publicity dept doing a lot of the heavy lifting at the beginning. My first book is still selling well and that is because I continue to go out on speaking tours, talking about my research, and I have to arrange all those gigs myself.

Penguin accepts ENCHANTRESS ms

Hurray! After a fourth set of edits, and revisions, my editor at Penguin has accepted my ENCHANTRESS manuscript for production – 88 pages and 22,000 words less than what I sent her at the end of December.

When I left off in my previous post, I’d accepted nearly all the editor’s changes for those initial 3 chapters, rewrote a little so the deletions weren’t obvious, and sent the file back for more [we agreed that there would only be one person working on it at a time]. The second installment of 11 more chapters arrived later in the week, and I chained myself to the computer to get them back to her asap. I learned that what she does is editing, and what I do afterward is revising. In other words, I revise her edits. This time I not only agreed with nearly every edit she made, but made additional deletions as well. Several days after I sent these back to her, round three began. We were now up to chapter 25, having revised two-thirds of the book and shortened it by almost 80 pages.

The final 11 chapters came in last week, with the editor’s comments that she had made relatively few changes. That was true, especially compared to the major edits to the first half of the novel. Once I finished revising these, which didn’t take too much time, it was clear that I needed to rework where several chapters began and ended in order to keep them all approximately the same length. I also changed several words and phrases that I’d overused, so that my characters didn’t spend their whole lives sighing and crying.

So at 2 am Sunday night [Monday morning], I emailed the file back and when I logged on before breakfast, there was the good news.