The Angel of Rome audiobook

I suppose every person, at some point, tries to break free from the identity you are assigned as a kid, from the person your parents and friends see, from your own limitations and insecurities. To create your own story. - Angel of Rome -------------------------------------- First sex is like being in a stranger’s kitchen, trying all the drawers, looking for a spoon. - Famous Actor You know that guy in the second Indiana Jones movie, The Temple of Doom, the Thuggee priest Mola Ram? Questionable taste in haberdashery, but possessed of a special power. He could reach his hand directly into a person’s torso, secure a grip on the heart, and rip it directly out of the body, not a procedure certified by the AMA. While I expect Jess Walter has better taste in hats, he is possessed of a similar power. Of course, when he rips out your heart, you won’t, unlike Mola Ram’s victims, actually die. You will get your heart back. But you will feel deeply, sometimes painfully, and the experience will stay with you.The author? No. Heartbreaker Mola Ram doing his thing in The Temple of Doom – but clearly a relation - image from Swarajya It has been nine years since Jess Walter’s last short story collection, We Live in Water, but he has continued to write them, publishing in a variety of journals and other outlets. When it was time, he looked through the fifty or so he had written since his last collection and managed to cull that down to a dozen, well, fourteen, but his editor made him cut two more. (Boooo! So mean of her!) like many novelists, Walter got his start in fiction writing by crafting short stories and selling them wherever he could – Harper’s, Esquire, McSweeney’s, ESPN the Magazine. Despite his success as a novelist, he still loves writing short stories. After all, he said, they’re no more difficult to write than novels, “they’re just shorter,” he said.> - from the Spokesman Review print interviewJess Walter - benign twin of Mola Ram? - image from The Spokesman-Review – shot by Colin MulvanyJust for the record, Jess Walter is one of the best writers working today, and this collection is a fine representation of a master at the pinnacle of his power. His work is engaging, powerful, moving, literary, and often LOL-funny. There are several motifs that repeat through multiple stories but the overall theme here is hope. While there are no overt feathers floating about in the stories, still, there is a comforter’s worth of downy literary substance in the air. Faced with challenging circumstances, many of the lead characters find a way to a hopeful place. It sorta surprised me because I think of myself as someone who likes to plumb darkness, but I kept coming across dark situations that led to moments of hope, and moments of connection between characters that I found surprising. I look back on those years, from 2013 to now [2022], losing a close friend, having my father suffer from dementia, and I can see different themes. A mother passing away from cancer and cancer always works its way…and I can see these themes that in almost all the stories that I ended up choosing, there was a surprising figure. Like Mr. Voice in the first story. And I think I was finding that I was finding such connection in my family and in my friends, even during a hard several years, personally and politically for a lot of people, I think I was looking for those places where you felt some refuge. - from the Spokesman Review print interview A subset of this is characters, particularly young ones, coming to define themselves, to mold themselves into the people they want to be, rather than simply accepting the pre-fab path that has been laid out for them. I suppose every person, at some point, tries to break free from the identity you are assigned as a kid, from the person your parents and friends see, from your own limitations and insecurities. To create your own story. - The Angel of Rome In To the Corner, one youngster seems to find a way forward, out of the despair that permeates the place where he has been growing up. Before You Blow centers on a young woman who finds an unexpected career option in her future, In Fran’s Friend Has Cancer, a character wonders just how much of their life it is possible to control. Place is important to Walter Growing up, the geography of New York was imprinted on me in the literature that I read, especially “Catcher in the Rye.” I’ve always wanted to do that for the city I live in. I think as writers, we mythologize these places where we don’t live. And I love creating a kind of mythology of Eastern Washington. It’s one of my favorite things when people from other cities come to Spokane because they want to visit places from the books. I also just love it there. It’s an incredibly rich place to write and set literature. I can still see Holden Caulfield’s Times Square, and I want readers to be able to see my Spokane that way. - from the Seattle Times interviewMore than half the stories are set in Spokane, with one in Boise and another in Bend, Oregon. Three travel farther afield, with one each in Manhattan, Rome, and Mississippi.FameThere are several famous characters in the collection. Mr Voice is a household name in Spokane for his voice-over work there. The Famous Actor is both impressed by his own fame, and massively insecure. One of the characters in Before You Blow is destined for fame, of a sort. The Angel of Rome features two stars, an Italian actress and an American TV actor. Walter manages to give them all personalities, for good or ill (mostly good).AngelsMaybe not the magical sort, but no less benevolent. Mr Voice turns out to be so much more than meets the eye. An American actor in Rome takes a shaky American scholar under his wing. An old friend comes to the rescue of a woman in great need. An old man turns his despair into a pointed generosity.TeensMost of the stories focus on characters in their teens and twenties, some adding a POV from the character looking back decades later. A couple focus on older peopleThematic threads, and literary gifts are of no matter if the characters do not gain and hold our interest. Thankfully writing characters you can relate to is yet another tool in his shed. Jess Walter can be counted on to write tales that are both image-rich and accessible. But he also gives us relatable characters, heart-rending tales, great twists, and a comedy-club-night-out worth of raucous laughter. You will be charmed, moved, and very satisfied. A triumph of a collection, The Angel of Rome, I am sure even Kali would agree, is simply heaven-sent. “I guess it seems to me”—Jeremiah pauses, choosing his words carefully—“that you shouldn’t give up hope until you’ve done everything you can.” Review posted – July 15, 2022Publication date – June 28, 2022 This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved the STORIES segment to the Comments section directly below.=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter, GR and FB pagesMy reviews of earlier work by Jess Walter-----2020 - The Cold Millions-----2013 - We Live in WaterInterviews-----Seattle Times - Spokane author Jess Walter on writing short stories, his working-class roots and his hometown by Emma Levy-----The Spokesman Review - Northwest Passages: Jess Walter and 'Angel of Rome' - with Shawn Vestal - video-----The Spokesman-Review - Finding truth and keeping it real: In Jess Walter’s new collection ‘The Angel of Rome,’ the Spokane author lets character shine through by Carolyn Lamberson

Thank you Jess Walter and Edoardo Ballerini for writing such an amusing romp of a story! “The Angel of Rome” is 2 hours of chuckles and laughs. The narrator, Jack Rigel (voiced perfectly by Edoardo Ballerini), finds a Latin studies program, well his mother did, at the Vatican. He himself declares that he speaks Latin like a 6 year-old, yet his mother tells him that he is a Latin Scholar and their Omaha Nebraska diocese will pave the way for him. Remarkably, he gets the scholarship. He lands in Italy and it’s one crazy situation after another.I highly recommend this short story when you need a chuckle. It’s good clean fun!

Audiobook…. Read by Edoardo Ballerini, Julia Whelan > fantastic voice narrations. ….8 hours and 9 minutesMAGNIFICENT!!!! -Wonderful stories!!! Sooooo sooooo satisfying from start-to-finish….EVERY story was terrific!!! …..strong constant joyful experiences with relatable characters — …..I laughed! I was sad! I cried! I was entertained! I was moved! I was INTERESTED….. Great emotional and cerebral balance!!!

3.5 stars rounded up.The twelve short stories in this collection have an intimate feel, with relatable relationships, circumstances and emotions. Some are sad and some are hopeful covering recurring themes about the relationships of children and their mothers and fathers, couples, friendships. The fear and loneliness of aging, the awfulness of cancer and Alzheimer’s, traumas of childhood and more are depicted. My very favorite is “Angel of Rome”, about life changing events in a young man’s life, from a year spent in Rome. 5 stars ! After I read it, I listened to the Audible Original version, and it was wonderful, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the reading of it more. Another 5 star is “ Mr. Voice”, narrated by a woman looking back on her childhood, a touching story of discovering who your family is. “Town & County” garnered 4 stars depicting the tough reality of caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s when you are the only care giver. It’s funny and sad.The rest of the stories were mostly 3 stars. I was either unable to connect with the characters or in the end I needed more to “get” the story. I still would recommend this to fans of Jess Walter because some of the stories are just as good as I expected.I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

This collection of stories is perfect. Every single story made me feel good or better, and there is not one saccharine or manipulative molecule of writing to be found. The stories are poignant, funny, building perfectly to the epic, hilarious tour de force “The Way the World Ends,” while simultaneously conveying our common human mess and giving readers hope to forge on.

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.

AudiobookA collection of short stories narrated by Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini!!!!! I loved it. Every story was perfect. Some I enjoyed more than others, but it held my attention completely start to finish. Would absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes an inside look into interesting lives and people but doesn’t want to commit to a full audiobook story experience.

“I mean, guys like you and me, Nebraska, what choice do we have except to invent ourselves? Over and over if we have to, until we get it right.”In The Angel of Rome, Jess Walter’s characters all go through a process of self-discovery and reinvention and surprisingly, most of them end up embracing hope. Individually, these are sparkling little gems that are, in turns, poignant, heartwarming, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.The two longest stories – the eponymous Angel of Rome and the last story, The Way the World Ends, are perfectly wonderful. In Angel, a rootless Nebraska boy named Jack Rigel exaggerates his accomplishments and ends up “earning” a church-sponsored year in Rome to refine his Latin. Problem is, his Latin is so bad that there’s little to refine. Then fate intercedes and he meets another American, a character actor whose trademark line is, “here’s trouble”. As his interpreter and eventual script doctor, he intercedes in the actor’s favor with a beautiful Italian actress who once starred in a campy movie that fueled his adolescent fantasies. During his time, he learns an important lesson: who are you if you can’t make it up?In The Way the World Ends is so darn good that as soon as I finished it, I read it again. It’s about two stranded climate scientists who, unbeknownst to either of them, are competing for the same professorship job in a Mississippi town. As the only two guests in the Butler Guest House, they meet a young man who is manning the desk, who just days ago, came out as gay. Their nihilism about the fate of humankind just as he’s embracing his authentic self, forces him to ask them a question: “So, I guess that’s what I wanted to ask you…if you think we’ve done everything we can?” They recognize that maybe, just maybe, they haven’t.The rest of the stories are also magnificent. A young woman, who has been dealt a horrible blow with a cancer diagnosis, wants to see her one-time lover. She recalls the time when she texted to tell him she’d gotten into law school, and he texted back with a blurry picture of his dick. Sensitive he isn’t but maybe, just maybe, he has a certain life force she needs.A gay adult son is forced to repeatedly come out to his demented and macho father and discovers the perfect place for him: Town & Country, a senior place that’s off the grid in Idaho where residents get to relive their "golden years" when meat loaf was $2 and a beer was 75 cents, when there were four channels and rotary telephones and no blacks or gays. And a curmudgeon and his wife, during a lunch out, encounter a student writer who is stealing bits and pieces of their conversation – and in ways, their life.As always, Jess Walter kept me under his spell in each and every one of these stories. My profound thanks to Harper for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this book of short stories. I hadn’t read anything by this author before but I like his style a lot and I think I will be looking into reading more of his books. I think my favorite story was Fran’s Friend has Cancer which was unique and definitely had me laugh. In general I found the characters well written and the stories well developed. As a personal bonus for me several of the stories took place in the Pacific Northwest where I currently live so it was fun got see some familiar names of places.

I’m astonished and blown away at how good this is

this book is excellent! it’s full of interesting and engaging short stories that talk about life, adolescence, aging, and hope. i highly recommend this one! especially the audiobook - the narrator is fantastic

Going into a Jess Walter book you know that you are going to be instantly transported to another time and place. He truly is a master storyteller with characters that you feel like you know on a personal level and stories that you will never forget. I don't read a lot of short stories but when I first learned that Jess Walter was coming out with a short story collection, I knew that I just had to read it! The Angel of Rome is a collection of 12 short stories. The stories are all about the small moments in life when everything changes- for the better, worst or even the outrageous. The collection contains a diverse cast of characters and voices as well as a huge range of settings taking the reader from Idaho to Italy. Using his signature big-hearted approach toward the darkest parts of humanity, the stories are not only humorous but also poignant and redeeming. I truly loved each and every story in The Angel of Rome. It's hard to choose an absolute favorite out of the collection but I will have to say that either Town & Country or Famous Actor are the most unforgettable ones. Town & Country tells the story of a gay son who must repeatedly come out to his senile father while searching for a place to care for the elderly man. Famous Actor is about an actor in a recovery who has a one-night stand with a film critic. Not only do I recommend The Angel of Rome: and Other Stories by Jess Walter, but I also recommend his prior works The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins. The Angel of Rome: and other stories by Jess Walter will be available on June 28! A massive thanks to Harper Books for the gifted copy.

This is an extremely short book. I don't know exactly how many pages it has but on Audible it was something like two hours. I was a bit skeptical, initially, I was thinking it will be something between a novella and a novel and both characters and story will remain undeveloped. How wrong I was! The book is very charming, very nice and, I dare say, very wise. In the end, I have noticed, lately, that everybody tries to make books resemble life as much as possible. Even fantasy books have a sad, grim, realistic touch. While I do not disagree with this completely it is so heartening that there is still someone who dares write a book which is just beautiful.

Jess Walter is one of the finest contemporary writers at work today; hands down if we're talking North America. I'm pretty sure I say the same thing each time I read and review one of his books. It's his range: contemporary, historical, satire, surreal, whimsical, resonant, short, long — he can do it all, with warmth, bullseye heartbreak, and deep humanity. This collection of twelve stories is lighter and more hopeful than 2009's collection, We Live in Water, published as the world was emerging from a crushing recession. The Angel of Rome comes at a similar emergence from a worst hard time, and we're in an even more dire state as a planet of selfish, wasteful humans. Walter takes this on with the final story, The Way the World Ends, which ended up being my least favorite in the collection, if only because it was the softest and least surprising. But my least favorite of Jess Walter is to say I didn't love it as much as the others. Two candidates for a professorship in the Geosciences department at Mississippi State are thrown together during a freak snowstorm. Jess Walter works in serious conversations about climate change while these two create a name-that-tune strip game with environmentally-themed oldies. As only Jess Walter can. The title story is the longest and sweetest, reminiscent of the novel that brought Walter bestseller fame, Beautiful Ruins. This light comedy caper, with its soft-focus Italian setting and endearingly nutty characters, is a charming homage to cinema. It returned me straight to my own study abroad bewilderment and joy and made me long for those salad days. What wowed me, what made me sit back and shake my head in wonder were the heart-twisting Mr. Voice, Magnificent Desolation, Drafting, To the Corner, Cross the Woods, the gut-punches and whiplash of Fran's Friend Has Cancer, Before You Blow, Balloons. Many offer soul-shaking humanity, others an awakening. The reader is left breathless, wondering what just happened? Even the sad and bitter Town and Country, about a gay man dealing with his dementia-inflicted dad whose inappropriate behavior is hilariously appalling and Famous Actor about a depressed barista in Bend who sleeps with a celebrity have laugh out loud moments mixed with poignancy. This is what Walter does best. He makes us feel. Nod our heads in recognition. He brings us home. Highly recommended.

I am a huge Jess Walter fan, so when I heard he had a new story collection, “The Angel of Rome and Other Stories”, I was excited to dig in! I had loved EVERY SINGLE ONE of the stories in his last collection “We Live in Water”. Could that magic happen again? It did! From page one/story one I knew I was in for another Jess Walter treat. There are three strong pillars to his immense writing talent: 1) his ability to completely flesh out a character in just a few words of description and dialogue: one sentence from a character can convey volumes. 2) His wonderfully relatable stories of the human condition: the reader cannot fail to identify and understand the situations Walter puts his characters in. And 3) his wit: there were more than a few occasions when I laughed out loud reading these stories: they can be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.I’d like to just comment on a couple of the great stories in this collection. The titular “Angel of Rome” was the longest story, and it was my favorite. It is narrated by native Nebraskan Jake Rigel, who is recalling when he was a naive 20-year-old and in Rome in the 1993 on a Latin scholarship - which he got by lying about his proficiency in Latin. On the day that he is so dejected, poor, and hungry that he’s ready to sell his leather coat for a ticket home, he stumbles upon a movie set and a beautiful Italian actress known as the Angel of Rome. Hilarity ensues, but so does growth, opportunity, wisdom, and life-changing friendships. The final story, “The Way the World Ends”, really showcases Walter’s writing chops. During a freak snowstorm on the campus of a college in Central Mississippi, Walter brings three disparate characters together in the otherwise empty campus hotel. He introduces us to two middle-aged climate scientists, Anna Molson and Rowan Eastman, and the college student on duty at the hotel desk, Jeremiah Ellis, who has been out of the closet for “about 20 minutes” and is in a quandary about attending an upcoming Pride Parade. Walter gets them all together and then proceeds to regale us with catastrophic facts about our impending doom due to climate change. This story is at once a hilarious farce and a dark cautionary tale. Only the pen of Jess Walter can present something both preachy and hopeful with such aplomb. As with all of Jess Walters stories and novels, I closed the book ready for more.Thank you, HarperCollins, for an advanced copy of this collection.