Tom Rachman

In 1953, a rich American who finds himself in Rome has an idea: The war is over, there's a new world being born... Why not start a newspaper? Not just any newspaper, but a Serious Newspaper, an English-language newspaper that reports news from all over the world, seriously and intelligently. Done and done: he hires two intelligent editors and they get down to business.

Fast-forward 50-odd years: it's the late 00s, the paper is still based in Rome, still reporting news, still with a loyal if show more dwindling readership... but both the paper and the people working there are going through a huge mid-life crisis. CNN and the Internet have changed the news irrevocably, the old newsmen have died of lung cancer or strokes ages ago, the owners have become professional investors, and the elephant in the room is trumpeting something that sounds like a last sad chorus.

"The internet is to news," he said, "what car horns are to music."

And at that point, this probably sounds like a serious and slightly crotchety tale of how oh my times have changed, dearie me, nobody has any yada yada yada anymore. Except here's what Rachman does: he visits a different character in each chapter - the editors, the journalists, the owners, the foreign correspondents, the trainees, the readers - picking up the story from their point of view, both of journalism and the world, and their whole lives; what's left of it when they've sacrificed almost everything to run a tiny Serious newspaper that everyone knows is dying. And every chapter, while carrying the plot forward somewhere in the background, subverts the previous one. There are almost no Network- (or The Newsroom-)style proud defenses of the role of journalism, and if there are, the next chapter is bound to turn them on their head by giving the talking stick to a character who thinks the previous one is a pretentious prat. And is happy to tell us about it in detail; someone has to be blamed for the fact that something is about to end, after all.

There are laughs, there are tears, there's love and heartbreak and ugly death, absolutely brilliant little character sketches that would work as separate short stories... but put it all together and you get this puzzle of a novel, sliding down so easily that you barely notice how Rachman piles on all the sneaky backstory and all the ways people can dedicate their lives to exposing The Truth, while living lives filled with lies and wishful thinking and things they cannot bear to see... y'know, life. There's the title, I guess. show less

Though billed as a novel, this is a series of vignettes or short stories that each focus on a different character. These characters have one thing in common: their connection - often employment - with an English-language newspaper in Italy. The stories are told in chronological order, so even as we move between each character's point of view and story, the full picture that we begin to put together is of the newspaper itself. In between each story, we learn more of the back story of how the show more paper came to be in the first place, and by the end of the book the two stories - the character sketches and the story of the newspaper - have merged.

I'm rather conflicted about this book. I liked the format, which often reminded me of Olive Kitteridge. In the latter, the short stories taken together gave me a mosaic of this one character as seen from many points of view. In The Imperfectionists, each character's story eventually gives you a full picture of the newsroom. Each story is rather artfully done, too, with clever use of language and interesting - though very imperfect - characters. And here my conflict lies. I did not these characters, and I have a very tough time reading about characters that I dislike. By the time I realized that no one was going to be likable, I was too far in to abandon the book. I found the characters and the overall tone fairly depressing, so the more I think about the book, the less I like it. The writing is superb, though, and at moments I cared about the characters despite my dislike, which tips the balance positively overall. show less

A novel about the staff of a small, international newspaper headquartered in Rome in the 1950s is ordinarily the last place I’d look for authentic character studies. Why pick a setting so strongly associated with universally recognizable stereotypes – wisecracking reporters, neurotic editors, cold-hearted publishers, profit-obsessed owners, experience-hardened expat Americans, food-obsessed Italians – if you don’t intend to avail yourself of them? Have to wonder if this is a show more challenge Rachman deliberately set himself in choosing a newsroom as the setting for this collection of short stories, each exploring in penetrating yet authentic detail the character, motives and impulses of one of the newsroom’s staff? Sounds like something a precocious graduate student would attempt, and I understand Rachman wasn’t many years out of grad school when he wrote this.

The title “The Imperfectionists” is well chosen, as each chapter/character study focuses on how the choices we make in life are seldom idealistic, seldom simple, seldom laudable … and yet inevitably true to the motives and impulses that shape our fundamental natures. We choose marriage not because we love but because we embrace convention, fear loneliness, need help coping with the challenges of a foreign language; we choose to delude ourselves not because we’re ignorant, but because we deliberately choose ignorance; we attempt noble things (establishing newspapers, writing great stories, championing feminist causes) not out of an idealistic sense of duty, but driven by passions infinitely more personal. The portraits that emerge are at once unfamiliar yet authentic, unsentimental yet compassionate, and organically witty without ever lapsing into deliberate irony or sarcasm.

Can understand why this has made all the critics so breathless. What Rachman does, he does splendidly well. He's a lovely writer with the gift of defining characters organically, through dialog and action rather than tedious expository text. Will I remember this book 6 months from now, though? I suspect not. For while the book’s theme is deftly, competently, and entertainingly presented, not sure it comes as much of a surprise. The reason it’s so easy to empathize with the folks in these stories – even the obnoxious ones – isn’t just because Rachman is good at what he does; it’s because, like the characters in this book, most of us have all at some point in our lives realized that the choices we make, the choices that define us, are seldom guided by idealism, sense or logic … but that we are nevertheless powerless to choose any other way. show less

Have you ever been enjoying a book so much that you feel like racing through it just so you can find out what happened to the characters at the end? Conversely, have you ever wanted to linger for an indeterminate amount of time over a narrative because you just didn't want their story to come to its inevitable conclusion? Well, I experienced both of these emotions simultaneously while reading Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists. Each chapter revolved around a different individual with ties to show more the newspaper and each chapter heading was a different headline from the paper. At the conclusion of each chapter, a snippet of history regarding the evolution of the paper was inserted which coincided with the information the reader had just learned about an individual from the present day. It's a mystery to me how he wove everything together so effortlessly but I fully appreciated that the pieces of the story were all interconnected to create a cohesive tale about a newspaper with more drama behind the scenes than on its pages. A brilliant read which I highly encourage you to pick up and give a shot. show less