The Angel of Rome

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. In the title story, written with actor Edoardo Ballerini, a starry-eyed Nebraska kid spends a year studying in Italy after high school. There, he stumbles onto the set of a film starring a fading Italian bombshell, and the encounter sets off an antic shaggy-dog tale culminating in the students in his Latin class writing a new ending for the movie. Walter is even better in quieter stories like “Drafting,” in which a woman battling cancer seeks out an old flame, a 36-year-old perpetually stoned skater dude who, despite his utter fecklessness, is the only person able to quiet her existential dread. Occasionally, Walter’s shrewdness about the nature of his characters can feel a little schematic, as in the otherwise entertaining and witty “Famous Actor,” involving a hookup between a coffee shop barista and a slumming movie star with a drug problem. The dialogue and setup are great (“It’s so great to just be in, like, a fucking apartment,” the actor says about the narrator’s place), though it ends predictably. Compared to the novels, this is minor Jess Walter, but minor Jess Walter is better than most. (June)