Jess Walter: THE ANGEL OF ROME

I read an enthusiastic review of this short story collection and decided to try it. A widely mixed bunch, several gay-themed. The title story is about a young American theology student in Rome befriending an A-list movie actress (fictionalized: is it Loren or Lollobrigida?) I watched My Week With Marilyn at the same time, which was a lot busier and more entertaining. Similarly themed, ‘Famous Actor’ has a woman in Oregon enjoying a one-night stand with an actor past his prime; some acerbic dialogue and merciless appraisals of his movie career gave this real juice.

‘Town & Country’ is the best of the gay tales. Jay’s widowed dad, a serial adulterer sliding into dementia, doesn’t remember his son came out. A daughter in ‘Mr. Voice’ recalls several weddings and two funerals in her mother’s complex history.

The concluding story, ‘The Way the World Ends’, offers dystopia flavored with graveyard humor. Four climatologists, drunk and stoned, discuss the doomsday scenario for the planet while a mixed-race night porter, newly out, worries about joining a banned Pride march in 1960s Mississippi. Here’s a sentence David Sedaris would be proud of: ‘He wouldn’t mind having a year or two of being gay before getting beaten up for it.’

 It’s easy to find echoes of other writers if you look for them. As well as Sedaris, I sensed traces of John Updike here and there, a true maestro to be influenced by. Jess Walter introduces a bunch of highly original characters. He writes extremely well, with occasional flashes of real brilliance. The cover blurb promises a “dazzling collection” of stories: I was duly dazzled.