Life’s survivors: The Angel of Rome and Other Stories, by Jess Walter, reviewed

Anyone who has read Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins will want to turn straight to ‘The Angel of Rome’, the title story in this second collection by the versatile American author. Like the novel that elevated Walter from an underrated writer of police procedurals and thrillers to one capable of bestsellers, ‘The Angel of Rome’ is set in Italy and features a filmset and glamorous actors. Both are also partly based on real life.

In Beautiful Ruins, Walter plays with what happened during the filming of the 1963 epic Cleopatra. Here he bases the story on an episode in the life of Edoardo Ballerini, an actor who read Beautiful Ruins. Walter, who lives in Spokane, Washington, co-credits Ballerini at the end of the story, which is about Jack Rigel, a shy 21-year-old wannabe writer who stumbles across a filmset while studying Latin, badly, on a scholarship in Rome.

Rigel’s angel is a washed-up American TV actor who enlists him as his translator and confidant.