THE ANGEL OF ROME

A dozen stories spell excellent news for fans of the Bard of Spokane.

Since Beautiful Ruins, his 2012 blockbuster, Walter has won a legion of readers who have been through the backlist and impatiently gobbled down his two follow-ups—a story collection, We Live in Water (2013), and the excellent historical novel Cold Millions (2020). This second collection of shorts is a glorious addition to the oeuvre, with a much brighter mood than its gloomy predecessor. The title story, which began its life as an Audible original, is a mini Beautiful Ruins, including an Italian setting, beautiful movie-star character, and heartbreakingly adorable but benighted male protagonist, here a blue-collar boy from Nebraska whose year abroad involves church-sponsored Latin lessons at a “papal community college” in a Roman industrial building. This. Story. Is. So. Damn. Funny. And almost ridiculously heartwarming. But the same can be said of many of the others, no matter how apparently depressing their topic. For example, the story about a father who must be institutionalized, “Town & Country,” opens with the fact that “Dad literally could not remember to not screw the sixty-year-old lady across the street,” and creates for the man in question an outlaw assisted living center in a seedy, one-story motel in northern Idaho where the meatloaf is still $2 and all the drinks are doubles. The climate change story, “The Way the World Ends,” brings two very depressed Ph.D. students to Mississippi State University to vie for a position in the geosciences department, then throws them together with a three-weeks-out-of-the-closet, very lonely college student named Jeremiah who's trying to decide whether it's worth risking life and limb to march in his first Gay Pride parade. What one of the “climate zealots” says to defend his newfound love of country music resonates through the collection: “Life is hard, the songs seemed to say, but at least it's funny, and it rhymes.”

Not sure why the author is in such a good mood, but it's contagious. Prepare for delight.