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    The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
    The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
    The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories

    Written by Don DeLillo

    Narrated by Michael Cerveris, Peter Friedman, Heather Lind and

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Story Prize, the first ever collection of “dazzlingly told” (The New York Times) short stories—now available as a trade paperback.

    Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white-collar prison and outer space, this “small masterpiece of short fiction” (USA Today) is a mesmerizing introduction to Don DeLillo’s iconic voice. In “Creation,” a couple at the end of a cruise somewhere in the West Indies can’t get off the island—flights canceled, unconfirmed reservations, a dysfunctional economy. In “Human Moments in World War III,” two men orbiting the earth, charged with gathering intelligence and reporting to Colorado Command, hear the voices of American radio, from a half century earlier. In the title story, Sisters Edgar and Grace, nuns working the violent streets of the South Bronx, confirm the neighborhood’s miracle, the apparition of a dead child, Esmeralda.

    Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateNov 15, 2011
    ISBN9781442346482
    Author

    Don DeLillo

    Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels including White Noise, which was made into a Netflix film, Libra, Underworld, Falling Man, and Zero K. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His story collection The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2013, DeLillo was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and in 2015, the National Book Foundation awarded DeLillo its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. 

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    Reviews for The Angel Esmeralda

    3.5/5

    21 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      strange stories with no real ending
    • 4/5
      Best stories: "The Angel Esmeralda", "Baader-Meinhof"
      People rave about "Human Moments" but I don't really feel it, it's almost as if DeLillo is doing JG Ballard.
    • 4/5
      I think this is terrific. I have long read DeLillo, and admired his talent, but some of his long, long fictions have frustrated me as they wander off. But his attraction to conspiracies, repetition and obsessions, not to mention his unique storytelling voice, actually adapt nicely to a shorter form. Indeed for me the constrictions of the short story give the work a great concision and focus. Plus, there are just some amazing stories in here. It's well-told and imaginative work, and I couldn't wait to read each story.
    • 4/5
      The Angel EsmereldaBy the time I was nearly finished reading The Starveling, the last piece in Don DeLillo?s first collection of short stories I had come to two conclusions:1. For a book of stories that prominently feature NYC as its backdrop there?s not a hint, nay, a sliver of pop culture. 2. His stories tend to feature characters who are perpetually guessing at the lives of others, yet not so great with figuring out themselves (pieces like Baader-Meinof, Midnight in Dostoyevsky, and The Starveling).If you?ve ever read a DeLillo book then you already know what to expect. Long passages full of prose that can frustrate as much as tantalize. Sometimes the reader is yielded to an almost exalted kind of literary enjoyment, as if DeLillo?s pulling the sentences straight from your brain. Other times can be maddening, like when you?re pages deep in the same paragraph trying to decipher a cohesive meaning.The nine pieces that make up this collection aren?t as maddening as say Underworld or most of Mao II or The Names. Language is still a prominent feature is DeLillo?s writing, characters trying to figure out what it means in their own context and how they relate to others. That?s because DeLillo tends to write in brush strokes. He?s good at using his talents to create and evoke an image in the mind. Like the images that partition the three groupings of stories he?s good at creating a situation and letting the characters think their way out of them.The opening story, Creation, centers on a couple desperately trying to get out of a tropical paradise near the West Indies, yet perpetually run into roadblocks by a poorly managed airport, leading to separation and infidelity. The Angel Esmeralda, meanwhile, focuses on a group of nuns that take regular trips to the South Bronx to help disadvantaged youths, coming into contact with a small girl who may or may not have Jesus like apparitions over an orange juice ad.When compared to an NYC author like Arthur Nersesian what?s the fundamental difference between him and DeLillo? Both write extensively about New York life (with DeLillo taking time to hop islands and locals). Yet, where Nersesian infuses his prose with pop culture like signposts for the reader to hang their familiarity on, DeLillo works his way into a situation without letting hype catch him. In The Starveling a man named Leo Z. spends nearly every waking hour going to various cinemas in Manhattan. Yet, despite getting into how Leo catalogs directors, running times, productions companies, etc. we never come to know what Leo sees (in fact, there?s only a scant reference to what theaters he?s come across).Still, I think DeLillo is at top form when he veers toward the maniacal, like the appropriately titled Hammer & Sickle. In a minimum correctional facility for financial misfits, Jerrod Bradway is currently doing six years for crimes related to his father?s company where we worked. Separated from his family he winds up becoming the prime audience for a financial news show narrated by his two pre-teen daughters as it?s shown in the prison facility for entertainment. What once seemed like a passing ideal within a family seems to take on another meaning of revenge as each telecast becomes more erratic. One of these days DeLillo should publish a complete book of his short stories. Surprisingly missing from this collection is Take the ?A? Train, one of his first shorts, about a man down on his luck, escaping his debtors in the NYC subway system. I?d also appreciate some context surrounding these smaller works. What sort of frame of mind was he in when crafting Human Moments in World War III or Baader-Meinof. It?s clear that terror as a theme has been on his mind from the beginning. But what terrorizes DeLillo?
    • 5/5
      Nine short stories by the acclaimed, award winning novelist, Don Delillo. His use of language is inspiring and his characters are pitch-perfect. A great cross section of America by one of our premier writers. Literature at its best.
    • 3/5
      A collection of very diverse short stories of experiences on the far outer reach of experience. Left absolutely no impression on me.
    • 5/5
      A well-balanced and far ranging collection of short stories from a masterful author. I had heard Baader-Meinhof on the New Yorker Fiction podcast, but the other eight stories were new to me. I especially liked the title story.
    • 1/5
      You know how in high school or college English classes, you unpack every single line of whatever text you're studying at the time. The class looks deeply into the work for symbolism, metaphor, syntax, diction, and deeper meaning. To be honest, much as I can enjoy doing it, I think a lot of that's bullshit. Sometimes a spade is just a spade, you know. Sometimes, the color of the wallpaper in the room wasn't the author subtly trying to send the reader a message about the hero's emotional state.

      Why am I going into all of this? Well, DeLillo's stories feel like he wrote them with these sorts of classes in mind. They're full of symbolism and deeper meanings, all intended to show how clever he is. Were I reading these with a class and taking the time to analyze them word by word, I might be impressed. However, as pleasure reading, they kind of sucked.

      Here's the thing: these stories were just so boring. I wanted to like DeLillo; actually, I still do, since I own two of his novels. They were mostly the sort of thing where nothing really happens and what does happen doesn't make sense, but probably because they were about something else altogether. A couple of them had awesome premises, but failed to focus on the cool parts. For example, one was set in Athens, Ohio, which was being beset by an endless stream of earthquakes. It focused not on that, but on a broken statue, obviously a metaphor, but for what I just don't care. Yes, I know much of this is my laziness, but I have a day job, y'all, and I don't want to do too much heavy lifting when I get home.

      The characters lacked development, I felt. Again, this just seemed to be much more about his ideas and getting his literariness across. Also, they were repetitive. In most of the stories, there was a refrain that would repeat several times, which is generally not my favorite literary technique, and didn't work for me here.

      I fully acknowledge that I didn't read these the way I think DeLillo intended them to be read, but, dammit, I'll read however I want to. Anyway, for the scholarly types that want to study sentences in detail, go right ahead; this is for you. I'm sure these are marvelous and critically praised and whatever, but I guess I'm not smart enough to appreciate them. Fine by me.

      Narration:
      The narrators match their style to the stories pretty perfectly. Of course, I didn't like the stories, so I didn't care for most of the narration either. For the most part, they affect (or always read with) a monotonous tone. These people don't give a fuck and they want the world to know it. This plays perfectly into the scholarly "too good for an interesting story line" business. It does not, however, make paying attention to the audiobook an easy task. If you like this style, then go for it, but it's not for me.
    • 3/5
      A series of short stories connected slightly thematically, well written and thought provoking.
    • 4/5
      Don DeLillo is one of my favorite novelists, and now he is one of my favorite short story writers, too. These nine stories are to savor, read one at a time and then absorb each for a day or two before reading the next one.
    • 5/5
      Delillo is quite simply one of the greatest contempt writers of fiction. Although these stories, by their nature, don't have the scope of his novels, he is unparalleled in his precise language and imagery. Brilliant.
    • 4/5
      DeLillo has become almost a literary icon. His remarks on the realness and unreality of modern life are distinctive and legendary, and this selection of stories spanning almost the entire length of his career are works to behold.

      Ordinary, grimy, ephemeral things take on new meanings and become transcendent parables on the depths of souls and living.

      My favorites are the title story, and "Human Moments in World War 3".