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Dec. 30th, 2022 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThere's a particular joy in discovering one of one's favorite books of the year in the final days of the year, IMO, like -- ah yes! 2022 still has some gifts left for me!
Not that it is any kind of surprise really that I loved Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country -- I had fully been expecting to love it ever since I heard about it -- but you know how it is when you are fully expecting to love a book, and there's that deep fear in your heart that perhaps it won't be quite as good as you hope, and then the corresponding delight when it does in fact turn out to be as good as you hoped or perhaps even better.
The premise of the book is that an angel and a demon, who have spent decades peaceably studying Talmud together in a tiny shtetl, undertake it upon themselves to find out what happened to a young woman of their community who went to America and then fell off the map. This is mostly because the demon is stressed about rising anti-Semitism in the Pale of Settlement and has seized upon the lure of a righteous task to get the angel to accompany him Elsewhere. En route to New York they meet up with Rose, the third protagonist, an irritable baby lesbian who is sulkily going to America alone after her beloved best friend had the absolute temerity to decide to get married instead of coming with her.
They also meet with (among other things): quite a lot of crime and various schemes of exploitation! a rising labor movement! the banality of evil as exemplified through the various indignities of Ellis Island! a too-perceptive grandmother! a distinctly unfriendly goyishe demon! a rich variety of angry ghosts!
I knew the basic plot of the book, but that did not mean that I in any way anticipated the actual amount of plot; I was really impressed with how much the story escalates itself in ways that are rapid and satisfying, without losing track of the primary thread of the protagonists' journey of discovery as their travels change them in unexpected ways and expand their boundaries of self-definition. But honestly, my favorite thing about the book is just the particular charm of its narrative voice, which slides effortlessly into the conversational-folkloric pathways carved out by Aleichem and Singer and other yid-lit greats while being extremely charming and immersive in its own right.
(I do have one moderately-sized complaint, which is that Rose's late-book romance does not feel nearly as earned as I would like it to be, but no things are or indeed should be perfect in this world.)
Not that it is any kind of surprise really that I loved Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country -- I had fully been expecting to love it ever since I heard about it -- but you know how it is when you are fully expecting to love a book, and there's that deep fear in your heart that perhaps it won't be quite as good as you hope, and then the corresponding delight when it does in fact turn out to be as good as you hoped or perhaps even better.
The premise of the book is that an angel and a demon, who have spent decades peaceably studying Talmud together in a tiny shtetl, undertake it upon themselves to find out what happened to a young woman of their community who went to America and then fell off the map. This is mostly because the demon is stressed about rising anti-Semitism in the Pale of Settlement and has seized upon the lure of a righteous task to get the angel to accompany him Elsewhere. En route to New York they meet up with Rose, the third protagonist, an irritable baby lesbian who is sulkily going to America alone after her beloved best friend had the absolute temerity to decide to get married instead of coming with her.
They also meet with (among other things): quite a lot of crime and various schemes of exploitation! a rising labor movement! the banality of evil as exemplified through the various indignities of Ellis Island! a too-perceptive grandmother! a distinctly unfriendly goyishe demon! a rich variety of angry ghosts!
I knew the basic plot of the book, but that did not mean that I in any way anticipated the actual amount of plot; I was really impressed with how much the story escalates itself in ways that are rapid and satisfying, without losing track of the primary thread of the protagonists' journey of discovery as their travels change them in unexpected ways and expand their boundaries of self-definition. But honestly, my favorite thing about the book is just the particular charm of its narrative voice, which slides effortlessly into the conversational-folkloric pathways carved out by Aleichem and Singer and other yid-lit greats while being extremely charming and immersive in its own right.
(I do have one moderately-sized complaint, which is that Rose's late-book romance does not feel nearly as earned as I would like it to be, but no things are or indeed should be perfect in this world.)
