It was Johnson's first novel; previously, he had published several books of poetry.

Alice Hoffman, writing for the New York Times, referred to the novel as "a mixture of poetry and obscenity".

[1] Angels follows two characters – Jamie, a young mother fleeing her abusive husband, and Bill Houston, a restless ex-convict – who encounter one another on an interstate bus trip.

Bill Houston also appears in Johnson's novel Tree of Smoke, which won the National Book Award in 2007.

[2] In 1999, David Foster Wallace included the novel on his list of overlooked American books published after 1960.