[b:The Imperfectionists|6834410|The Imperfectionists|Tom Rachman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327935648s/6834410.jpg|7045390] is both a novel and a short story collection. To me, it reads like a novel, but each chapter could standalone as a short story. It is the story of an international newspaper being published out of Italy. Each chapter takes us into the life of one of the characters associated with the newspaper. All of the characters have a relationship to the newspaper, but each one is totally unique and perfectly drawn. Every detail is necessary and so thought through. It's just beautifully vivid.

It isn't a pretty picture of humanity, but the flaws are ones that we see all around us. Who doesn't know a person who tries to avoid all their responsibilities? Or a person who is terribly lonely? Or a person whose choice of a mate seems both insane and yet somehow understandable?

In the end, I just felt that Rachman is incredibly talented. I admired what he did while also being engaged by it. ( )

Mixed feelings about the novel. It was well-written and held my interest all the way through, and was very funny in places. All the main characters had major problems, reasonable given the title. But I kept feeling that the author had a real streak of cruelty; every time I started feeling sympathetic to a character they were either shown as being worse than you realized, or something awful happened to them. I felt like the author was being heartless to his own creations.

Listened to the audiobook, the reading was ok but nothing special. ( )

Absolutely incredible, I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. So brutally honest. Makes me really hurt for the publishing industry, especially newspapers. I wonder what The Imperfectionists would look like now? ( )

This book is about a Rome based English newspaper and the many characters that have worked there over the decades. The chapters are little vignettes of each character and their imperfections. It skips back and forth time-wise, but it is not at all distracting. I did not really like any of the characters, and only two of them were interesting enough that I wished more was written about them. ( )

I was in Rome in 2007, and I'm from Atlanta-ish, two facts which made me love this book even more than the format, the choppy perspectives. It's almost a book of short stories, but the first-person chapters of people struggling through life - fairly depressing, in some ways - interwoven with the vignettes about the owner and his successors swirls into life, sucking you into their network and their relationships. I loved it. I love short stories, I love varying perspectives, I love Rome, I love/hate Atlanta (which doesn't exactly play much of a part in this book), I loved this. ( )