Full confession: I balked, briefly, at the opening line: I urgently wanted to cut the words "and left her life behind," because to my ear they weakened that arresting "On a full moon night, after a day of fasting, the young bride Sorel Kalmans leapt from a window." But When the Angels Left the Old Country was among the best novels I read in 2022, so I persevered, and even if The Forbidden Book's first sentence was a misstep, it was pretty much the last one.Who are you? is the question at the heart of this novel, and it presents itself almost at once: Sorel, caught like a fox (watch that metaphor as you read this book) in the trappings of a wealthy Eastern European Jewish bride, looks in the mirror: "She might have found the face pretty, had she not been trying to see it as her own, and beneath the plucked brows and lip and the delicate brush of powder over her freckles, she couldn’t find any trace of herself."But even after she bolts, dresses herself in the clothes she has stolen from a stableboy, and cuts her hair, she's not quite herself, or she's more than herself. Can I tempt readers if I remark that The Forbidden Book is in part a murder mystery, and that it may not always be desirable to get rid of a dybbuk?I can't discuss what for me was the most intriguing aspect of The Forbidden Book without a major spoiler, so: What shall we make of the (implied) future relationship between Sorel and Adela, considering that Isaac's spirit has taken up permanent residence in Sorel's head? Sorel is clearly smitten with Adela; Adela looks at Sorel heatedly more than once, but Sorel believes those heated looks are really for Isaac. And Sorel's appearance seems to shift subtly from time to time, depending on how front-and-center Isaac is.So identities are mutable and so are desires. Even the Angel of Death turns out to be not one but two, and each Angel is both destructive and salvific in nature.The Forbidden Book, like When the Angels Left the Old Country, is a road-trip novel, although this time the characters travel back and forth within narrow bounds -- until the end, when, to put it as vaguely as possible, they're about to break free.What else can I say except that you should hurry off and read this. Thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for the ARC: I feel lucky.