I enjoyed this collection, but after some years since reading it, I don't recall enough to discuss it. ( )

A few stories were overwrought, but these were eclipsed by some of the best stories I've ever encountered. ( )

I had greatly enjoyed DeLillo's precious work, Falling Man, but this collection of short stories were rather hit or miss - mostly miss. A great deal of the stories lacked direction and some just seemed pointless. The title story was probably my favorite of the set. Also, I am still highly annoyed by the artificial quality of DeDillo's dialogue although I seem to be the only one with this issue. ( )

Each story in this collection justifies the purchase of the whole. Yes, they’re that good. Each is quintessentially DeLillo — his distracted, sometimes muffled, realism creating an almost deadpan delivery. Yet the range is astonishing. Perhaps not, given that these stories where originally published over the course of more than thirty years. But compare the Hemingwayesque style of an early work like “Creation” (1979) with the almost absurdist technique of “Hammer and Sickle” (2010). DeLillo never surrenders to his own competence. He always challenges himself.

It would not be playing favourites to find “The Angel Esmeralda” to be the best of the bunch. Presumably DeLillo thought so too, choosing it as the title for the collection. It presents a harsh cityscape in which the nuns, the elderly Sister Edgar and the younger Grace, perform their acts of charity. Sister Edgar is old school, grammatical in her adherence to the metaphysics of indulgence. Grace is more demanding that what she sees in front of her is real. The tension between them is visceral but it is Edgar who succumbs to the very possibility of angelic visitation, convinced that the image appearing sporadically on an advertisement hoarding is none other than the little girl, Esmeralda, so recently murdered in the Bird (a desolate no man’s land of building ruins and despoiled autos).

I also especially enjoyed “Midnight in Dostoevsky” in which two undergraduates at a liberal arts college embellish their drab days with a kind of competitive fictionalization. And the conflict, when it comes, turns inevitably on whether the world is all that is the case. Brilliant!

Highly recommended. ( )

A disappointing collection of short stories. I am a fan of a few DeLillo novels, but this is nowhere near his best work in my opinion. ( )