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Loading... The Angel of Rome and Other Storiesby Jess Walter
   No current Talk conversations about this book. 1   RidgewayGirl | Nov 13, 2024 |    ) nivramkoorb | Sep 13, 2023 |  ) banjo123 | Jul 9, 2023 | His stories also provide a poignant and painful illustration of the stages of life. I particularly liked his ability to characterize teenage angst and the unique concerns of aging citizens in communities and families that don’t always recognize individual needs. Some of the themes that I will remember are -Finding protection from unexpected and chance meetings -Magnificent desolation -Reinvention of self -Limited expectations from certain people -Stereotyping -Generational shifts -Universal humanity LindaLoretz | May 20, 2023 | The lengthy title story starts off a bit weak, but develops, even as its protagonist develops, into a lovely tale of growth and fellow-feeling. Other stories that I particularly enjoyed include, “Famous Actor,” “Mr. Voice,” and “Town & Country.” But there are no weak stories here. As with his novels, Jess Walter is an accomplished writer, sometimes surprisingly so. It’s easy to recommend this collection. (  ) RandyMetcalfe | Nov 21, 2022 |
Reading Walter’s perceptive collection (after The Cold Millions) is like sitting next to the guy at a dinner party who has something hilarious to say about everyone and knows all their secrets....Compared to the novels, this is minor Jess Walter, but minor Jess Walter is better than most. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
Short Stories.
HTML: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes—for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous—as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again "solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire). .No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.06)
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Wikipedia in English
1
He was right. It did sound like a line. And I did want to get out of there.
"Okay," I said.
I disliked him from the moment I decided to sleep with him.
Jess Walter is a fantastic novelist, and it turns out that he's even better at writing short stories.This is simply one of the best collections I have read. It's lousy to like a book so much when it comes to writing a fair and unbiased review because I am biased! This collection is great and a demonstration that a good short story can do more in twenty pages than most novels. In this collection, which is set mainly in Spokane, Washington, a man looks for a suitable retirement home for his father, whose dementia hasn't stopped his womanizing or drinking much at all; a woman returning to Spokane is reminded of the year she was in high school and dating a college student from a wealthy family; a woman sleeps with a movie star even though she doesn't particularly like him or his movies; an elderly man invites a group of young hoodlums into his house; and in the titular story, a young man spending a year in Rome studying Latin ends up working as a translator for an American actor, despite not knowing any Italian. Each story was memorable and so well-crafted, and each one was different from the others. (