The Golem and the Sad Girl

The Book of Splendor by Frances Sherwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this quite a bit. 4 stars.

In part, this is the story of a young woman who falls in love with a golem, and that's my favorite part of the story. Rochel is a marginalized young woman in the Jewish quarter of Prague in the early 17th century. As a child of rape, she looks different and is treated different, though a decent man makes her his wife. He's not a bad guy, but he has blind spots that leave Rochel feeling unseen and unloved. (He does love her. He just isn't good at it.) When threats from the intolerant Christians make them fear for their lives, the rabbi creates a golem (a story which is repeated in legend and is here treated as fact). The golem can't speak but he's intelligent and sensitive, and he definitely sees Rochel.

I would have liked more of their story. They're together on the page too little. The other characters are also interesting, but lead nowhere. We have the Holy Roman Emperor, who's crazy and wants to live forever; Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler; the alchemist John Dee; doctors; spies; a rag and bone man who is one of the heroes of the story; Vaclav, the bastard son of the emperor who serves him though the emperor has no idea who he is; and more. As much as I enjoyed them, most of their stories peter out, with their endings coming off-stage or omitted altogether. We don't get the scene when Kelley is hanged. We don't see when Kirakos and Sergey escape to South America. The final scene with Vaclav and the emperor on the sands by the river seem to hint at something, but I don't know what. And Rochel's story, with her husband, has a logical conclusion, but we skip most of the events that get us there.

It was fun to read, but a little frustrating in the end. I can appreciate the excellent prose, and there's an entertaining plot filled with memorable characters, but the loose threads and skimpy conclusion didn't entirely satisfy. I usually feel like books are longer than they should have been; I think this one could have used another hundred pages.

Anyway, I still liked it.

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