First impressions review: When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb

 

My mom gave me this book as an early Christmas present, pitching it as “Jewish Good Omens”.  And she was not wrong: This felt a lot like the best kind of ‘Good Omens’ fan fiction – which I 100% mean as a compliment! At the same time, the story is its own thing – “classic Yiddish novel, but it’s queer” is what the author said they were going for – and would thus be enjoyable even for someone who hasn’t read GO and doesn’t feel like they are visiting with alternate-universe Aziraphale and Crowley!

 

The reason for the strong GO vibe is two of the three main characters: a demon and an angel who have been studying the Talmud together for several centuries in a shtetl too small to have a name and have in the process have become friends. Ashmedai, more commonly known as Little Ash, is an easily-bored mischief-maker but not actually evil, relies more on his wits than on the strength of his magical powers to get out of scrapes, has vertical-pupiled eyes that see in the dark, and is the instigator of the adventure – in this case, a journey to America. So far, so Crowley. But Little Ash also has some extra demonic features that are cool, including bird feet

, and the ability to pull someone’s soul out of their eyes and eat it (though he only does this to evil-doers, and not very often, because his angel disapproves). Then there’s this:

To the eyes of a demon, all of his handsomeness was wasted, as little creatures seemed to crawl over his skin like ants -creatures…built of little tangles of Hebrew letters that detailed all of his sins…all of the lives this man had destroyed to get where he was”

 Like Aziraphale, the angel is a genderless divine being who is rather distractible, out of touch with modern trends, and possibly more fond of books than people. It takes this to the next level, however, by initially being SO divorced from the human world that it doesn’t have a permanent name. Though Little Ash does manage to persuade it that it really ought to put on some trousers for their trip, since long white caftans are just too conspicuous! Oh, and the angel has sideways-pupiled goat eyes and little hooves – but only kids and holy people can see these or his companion’s odd features, fortunately.

 

The structure of the story differs from Good Omens in being a relatively small-scale character-focused tale, with the stakes being “we need to see if this girl from our village is OK” rather than “we need to stop the apocalypse”, and in in being more of a drama-with-comedic-elements rather than a satire of cold war politics, antichrist/apocalypse movies, and dogmatic religion. Smaller stakes doesn’t mean less drama, however. Since we are so focused on these two characters, plus a girl they meet on the boat named Rose, we really get to care about every bump in their relationships and the personal dangers they encounter.

"We’ll go to the New York City jail and try to break out a man we know for certain is the target of assassins..?’…'Yes. Don't be angry with me; it is the right thing to do.' Little Ash was not angry in the least. He was, in fact, delighted...'It sounds like making trouble, as far as I'm concerned.' 'Very much like that, Uriel agreed....'If you're wanting to make trouble with me, then certainly I want to make trouble with you.'"

 

I really liked Rose, whom the angel approves of as “a woman of valor” and the demon likes because she is just so angry. The reason she’s angry when they meet is that she was hoping to come to America with her friend Dinah…but then Dinah had to go off and get married, and she’s taking it really hard. It was very cute (and painfully relatable) to see her and Little Ash bonding by talking about the best friends who they are clearly in love with…despite neither of them realizing that that’s what they are doing!

“If so were marrying Dinah - if I were a man, of course…”
Or:
“You’ll never have to get married and even if you did you’d have a wife.” Little Ash gave this some thought. “I don’t think I would.”

 

Little Ash’s protectiveness of the angel is sweet, but often translates into anger when he is scared. It was nice to see him learn to trust Uriel’s decisions, one of which was to keep the name that Little Ash had put on his papers, even though it makes him a little more vulnerable, and to see the two of them actually learn to communicate how important the other is to them. I also liked that, despite its new name, the angel never does pick a gender, and that Little Ash and Rose support that. That was an element that I suspect comes from the author’s experience…at least so far as I was able to look up anything about them. While I'm not qualified to speak to how well it captures the Jewish immigrant experience, it certainly lines up with other things I've read on the subject. The anxiety Rose and one member of the main duo felt while stuck on Ellis Island was heart-rending, and the inclusion of a garment workers' strike was a nice touch too.

 

This was a 5-star read for me most of the way through – I was having a great time – but I found the ending a bit abrupt and lack-luster. Rose’s happy ending felt a tad rushed, a little “congratulations, hero; here’s your princess!” By contrast, the ending for Little Ash and the angel was nice, but not really any more resolved in terms of whether it is a romantic relationship than Good Omens was. I mean, if it IS a sort of queer-platonic thing, that’s fine…I’m just not sure why the book doesn’t say so! It sort of made sense in Good Omens because A) the book was published in 1990 and the authors were being subtle in their hints at the MCs maybe being more than besties, and B) EVERYONE gets a kind of open ending to their story because free will and change was kind of a theme – neither is the case here. Also, I couldn’t help feeling that the fates of the gangster vs. the factory owner were unbalanced; the latter probably did a lot more harm, without directly getting blood on his hands, and I kind of wanted to see the ghost eat him! Or at least to see the strikers get their way via striking, not in a sort of side effect of the main plot.

 

However, those are minor quibbles. This is overall a really excellent book, which I would highly recommend.