The Imperfectionists (2010)

I will admit that this book is making me think. I enjoyed it more towards the end when I got the hang of it being character studies. ( )

What a depressing little book. All characters are very unlikeable and things usually do not end well for them. And yet, I strangely enjoyed it. ( )

A collection of sharp and insightful, at times flinch-inducing, character sketches. I felt like I knew many of these people a page into their chapters. A quick but memorable read. The only reason I don't give it five stars is the abrupt, mysterious ending (damned post-modernists). ( )

I picked this novel up in one of my favorite bookstores, Kramerbooks & Afterwards Cafe in Washington, DC. Diane helped me pick it out, thinking it sounded like something I would like. It was a very fast read and I so wish I could give it five stars, but four will have to do.

Tom Rachman is a gifted writer. His prose pulls you through the story rapidly. It's smooth as silk, deep in texture and wrought with evocative emotions. The novel itself is more a collection of short stories of characters that all intersect in an international newspaper located in Rome, Italy. He writes sage and witty commentary on the newspaper industry, office politics, relationships, and the evolution of media from print to television to the Internet.

I also enjoyed how between each "story," there was an interlude that followed the history of the family who created the newspaper, moving through time to catch up to the novel's main time frame.

Having said that, I should be required to give this book the top rating. However, each of the characters and their stories are so utterly depressing. I felt my own life was an utter dream in comparison and that the very worst in real or fictional people's lives couldn't compare the absolute depression of the characters inhabiting "the imperfectionists." Each successive story felt like cars piling at the scene of an accident, each worse than the previous, each sadder or more depressing. I hate Hollywood endings, but at least one happy story out of the 11 or something less sad than all the other entries would have helped me.

So, excellent effort and beautifully executed, but for me, too depressing to rate it a 5. Four stars will have to suffice. ( )

Great look at the newspaper industry - especially in the early 2000s as it battles the rise of technology. This is a small newspaper in Rome - started on the whim of Cyrus Ott an American billionaire who wants to make amends with a former lover - essentially this is his gift to her. She and her husband make it a viable enterprise and the story follows the paper through about 50 years. Most of the action takes place in roughly present-day and follows a handful or so of the paper’s employees, working in various capacities- each gets his/her own chapter and headline so the stories are independent but interwoven. There is their big story but also their personal lives: Arthur Gopal who writes the obits and is at the bottom of the pecking order - suffers personal tragedy that makes him a better writer and he rises through the ranks. Herman Cohen the picky publisher whose mentor turns out to be a flop and frees him to be his own self. Kathleen Solson, the editor in chief who walks the line between bitchy boss and exacting professional and a few others from copy editors to foreign stringers and three generations of the hapless Otts. ( )