A Midwest native, Wecker holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Joyland and Catamaran, as well as the fantasy anthology The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and children.
Wecker's new novel, The Gates of Midnight, is the much-anticipated conclusion to The Golem and the Jinni trilogy.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Wecker's reply:
I've been in a weird reading space for the past month or so, the kind where I have a hard time settling. I'll pick up a book and then give it up as not quite right, when the truth is that it's perfectly fine and I'm the problem. I'm glad that I managed to read Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional before the malaise set in. Wood's protagonist is an unnamed Australian woman who, in the throes of burnout, decides to visit a shabby quasi-convent near the villageVisit Helene Wecker's website.where she grew up. The next thing the reader knows, she's left her husband and her job and moved in permanently. She's not a nun, or at all religious. She doesn't even believe in God. What she seems to want is refuge and solitude, so that she can do the work of examining her own life. And the convent provides that, for the most part -- though there are crises here and there, including a mouse infestation that begins as a nuisance and then turns horrifyingly Biblical. There's also an extended dilemma involving a celebrity nun and the remains of one of the convent's former sisters. The narrator describes these doings alongside her own childhood, excavating memories and regrets. The outcome is nothing so dramatic as a spiritual rebirth; instead Wood makes us feel the result as a series of slow, tectonic shifts, as the narrator adjusts towards a greater acceptance.
Writers Read: Helene Wecker (June 2013).
The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.
--Marshal Zeringue
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