Washed-up actors, a writing student who is more sinister than he first appears, a smitten high school science teacher, a cancer patient looking to escape the confines of her parents’ house, and a pair of climate scientists stranded by freak weather - all this and more in Jess Walter’s latest short story collection, The Angel of Rome and Other Stories!
I really enjoyed this one, as I suspected I would - Jess Walter is a fantastic short story writer and there are some wonderful gems to be found in this book.
It’s not hard to see why the book is named The Angel of Rome as the story - the longest one here at 65 pages - is easily the best. It’s about a kid, dreaming of leaving Omaha, Nebraska to reinvent himself somewhere romantic, who gets a scholarship to study Latin at the Vatican. One day he stumbles into a movie shoot and befriends the American lead and meets the Angel of Rome, Angelina Amadio, an Italian actress famous in America for a cult ‘80s slasher flick.
It’s a really entertaining story with comedic overtones that sees the main character go from one absurd situation to another until the surprisingly emotional finale. The three main characters - Jack, our narrator, Ronnie Tower, the American actor, and Angelina Amadio - are vividly written and are such pleasant, amusing company. Walter also captures that feeling of being in your early 20s where your everyday experience is a balance between excitement and optimism for the future and having no money and living a desperately meagre existence in the present.
Mr. Voice is a fine story about a woman reflecting on her youth where her beautiful mother married a famous voiceover artist, and what happened to them all. Fran’s Friend Has Cancer is the most memorable because of its eerie, Twilight Zone-esque twist at the end, and I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories.
Speaking of Twilight and suckers, Magnificent Desolation - about a high school science teacher who falls for the recently divorced mother of his worst student - has a lot of bizarre references to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books. The student’s name is Jacob Cullen, the teacher’s name is Edward, and the setting is a high school in the pacific north-west. It’s a sweet, funny story but I don’t know why Walter included those Twilight references - I thought maybe the story had originally appeared in a satirical horror anthology but, looking at the acknowledgements at the back, it didn’t. Maybe he lost a bet? Maybe… he’s a fan… ?
What impresses me about the collection is how charming nearly all of the stories are. While the above are the ones that stood out the most to me, I still got something out of nearly all of the others. Before You Blow, about a woman recalling one summer where she worked in a restaurant and dated a much older man, has this bittersweetness to it as she finds out what happened to the guy who seemed so exciting and dashing to her decades later.
Cross the Woods is one of the shortest stories here but has an unexpectedly touching ending - it’s about a single mother whose flighty Romeo makes a decision she’s secretly hoping he would make. Even To The Corner, about an old man scowling about some kids hanging around on the street near his house, has a surprisingly heartwarming finale.
Walter uses the time jump device in a number of his stories - one minute the narrators are kids, the next they’re years older and looking back on their lives - and it’s really effective in adding another dimension to the stories, making them more interesting but also making the reader think about the broader picture of how seemingly small events have major repercussions in our lives overall.
I also wonder if that’s a reflection of where the author is in life. How he’s now in his late ‘50s but, like most of us I’m sure, doesn’t feel his age mentally and is looking back thinking about where the time has gone.
The only story I can’t say I liked all that well is the final one, The Way The World Ends, which is also unfortunately the second longest here. It’s about two climate scientists interviewing for a teaching position at Mississippi State University and get stranded on campus due to freak weather. The story wears its liberal politics quite brazenly on its sleeve which adds to its unlikeability, particularly as it characterises all Southern people as conservative rednecks who love Trump and don’t believe in science. Sure, the South has its share of those but to pretend it’s all of them? Come on. The story itself did little to engage either. It’s a lot of silly scenes that don’t really come together in a satisfying or meaningful way.
Still, I had a great time with this book for the most part and it’s rare for a collection to feature just one weak story rather than a more equal mix of good and bad. If you enjoy contemporary short fiction, you can’t go wrong with Jess Walter’s The Angel of Rome and Other Stories or his other collection We Live in Water. Walter shows once again why he’s one of the best short story writers working today.
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