Impressions: 'The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories' by Don DeLillo

‘The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories’ by Don DeLillo (Scribner 2012)

The Angel Esmeralda is a collection consisting of nine short stories published between 1979-2011. Although each story is completely different from one another in tone and approach, there is a thematic consistency to them. Arranged chronologically, it’s also interesting to see DeLillo’s progression, from the earliest story, more in the vein of his earlier work (i.e. Americana, Great Jones Street), to the latter, tackling more recent topics such as terrorism, white collar crime, and economic collapse

Out of the nine, the stories that stood out for me were The Ivory Acrobat, about a woman who freaks out after an earthquake and subsequent aftershocks in Athens with its atmosphere of tension, helplessness, and paranoia; the title story, The Angel Esmeralda, concerning a group of nuns working to help the poor in late 1970s/early 1980s South Bronx while investigating a ‘miracle’ concerning a murdered child; Baader-Meinhoff, a woman visits an exhibit of paintings of terrorists and meets a strange man who later tries to rape her at her apartment. The two incidents play off one another in a very terrifying way. Although the story itself may not be specifically about terrorism (despite it being named after the German radical left wing group of the 1970s), it most definitely plays on the feeling that terrorism evokes; Midnight In Dostoevsky, two college students invent a mythology surrounding a strange professor, raising the question if it’s better to know or to invent; and the earliest story in the collection, Creation, about a couple unable to leave a Caribbean island, told in a very sparse, minimalistic way, relying on the unsaid more than what is actually revealed in the text.

There is a common theme throughout each of these stories — distance, observation from afar; disconnectedness, alienation, helplessness, conspiracy — themes common in DeLillo’s work. Overall, a highly enjoyable collection of short stories from one of America’s leading authors.

The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories is available here.