The Golem - Gustav Meyrink

"The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters. The red-headed prostitute Rosina; the junk-dealer Aaron Wassertrum; puppeteers; street musicians; and a deaf-mute silhouette artist.

Lurking in its inhabitants’ subconscious is the Golem, a creature of rabbinical myth. Supposedly a manifestation of all the suffering of the ghetto, it comes to life every 33 years in a room without a door. When the jeweller Athanasius Pernath, suffering from broken dreams and amnesia, sees the Golem, he realises to his terror that the ghostly man of clay shares his own face...

The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. Perhaps the most memorable figure in the story is the city of Prague itself, recognisable through its landmarks such as the Street of the Alchemists and the Castle."

This book is easily the most disturbing, unsettlingly, nonsensical, confusing book I have read in a long time, maybe ever. It feels like an incredibly macabre adult version of Alice in Wonderland. You are dragged from nonsensical reality warping situation to the next, each infused with dark occult symbolism. 

Gustav Meyrink's unique infusion of Kabbalism, Freemasonry and the Wandering Jew mythos into the Golem legend can get murky at ti
mes, but in light of the author's own divided spiritual pursuits it makes sense that clarity remains elusive. As an early fictional reflection of this restless search for inner truth, it is disjointed, confusing and thoroughly disturbing. This novel is at times highly episodic in nature (it was originally published in serial form), alternately dwelling on various possible explanations for what is going on, while only tangentially maintaining contact with the overarching narrative. What is truth, imagined, dreamt or the result of madness is always unclear and I think purposefully so.  Though it comes full circle in a manner of speaking, it is still deliberately vague in its conclusion.

While the actual prose and lyrical descriptions are truly wonderful and haunting in the best way possible, I found the actual content of the book too disturbing to enjoy. It is a relatively short book but I found it a slog to get through as you never really understand what is going on. The characters while all so very promising, such as Rosina, Miriam, and the silhouette artist, are never fleshed out and are reduced to boring paper cut-outs. While I can see that Meyrink is trying to make a point in this book, his use of occult symbolism and narrative structure is too abstract to get his themes across with any poignancy. 

Age Rating 16+. Thoroughly disturbing atmosphere with some sexual illusions.