The Imperfectionists: A Novel [Hardcover]

Tom Rachman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010 Printing presses whirr, ashtrays smolder, and the endearing complexity of humanity plays out in Tom Rachman's debut novel, The Imperfectionists. Set against the backdrop of a fictional English-language newspaper based in Rome, it begins as a celebration of the beloved and endangered role of newspapers and the original 24/7 news cycle. Yet Rachman pushes beyond nostalgia by crafting an apologue that better resembles a modern-day Dubliners than a Mad Men exploration of the halcyon past. The chaos of the newsroom becomes a stage for characters unified by a common thread of circumstance, with each chapter presenting an affecting look into the life of a different player. From the comically overmatched greenhorn to the forsaken foreign correspondent, we suffer through the painful heartbreaks of unexpected tragedy and struggle to stifle our laughter in the face of well-intentioned blunders. This cacophony of emotion blends into a single voice, as the depiction of a paper deemed a "daily report on the idiocy and the brilliance of the species" becomes more about the disillusion in everyday life than the dissolution of an industry. --Dave Callanan

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Tom Rachman on The Imperfectionists

I grew up in peaceful Vancouver with two psychologists for parents, a sister with whom I squabbled in the obligatory ways, and an adorably dim-witted spaniel whose leg waggled when I tickled his belly. Not the stuff of literature, it seemed to me.

During university, I had developed a passion for reading: essays by George Orwell, short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, novels by Tolstoy. By graduation, books had shoved aside all other contenders. A writer--perhaps I could become one of those.

There was a slight problem: my life to date.

By 22, I hadn't engaged in a bullfight. I'd not kept a mistress or been kept by one. I'd never been stabbed in a street brawl. I'd not been mistreated by my parents, or addicted to anything sordid. I'd never fought a duel to the death with anyone.

It was time to remedy this. Or parts of it, anyway. I would see the world, read, write, and pay my bills in the process. My plan was to join the press corps, to become a foreign correspondent, to emerge on the other side with handsome scars, mussed hair, and a novel.

Years passed. I worked as an editor at the Associated Press in New York, venturing briefly to South Asia to report on war (from a very safe distance; I was never brave). Next, I was dispatched to Rome, where I wrote about the Italian government, the Mafia, the Vatican, and other reliable sources of scandal.

Suddenly--too soon for my liking--I was turning thirty. My research, I realized, had become alarmingly similar to a career. To imagine a future in journalism, a trade that I had never loved, terrified me.

So, with a fluttery stomach, I handed in my resignation, exchanging a promising job for an improbable hope. I took my life savings and moved to Paris, where I knew not a soul and whose language I spoke only haltingly. Solitude was what I sought: a cozy apartment, a cup of tea, my laptop. I switched it on. One year later, I had a novel.

And it was terrible.

My plan – all those years in journalism--had been a blunder, it seemed. The writing I had aspired to do was beyond me. I lacked talent. And I was broke.

Dejected, I nursed myself with a little white wine, goat cheese and baguette, then took the subway to the International Herald Tribune on the outskirts of Paris to apply for a job. Weeks later, I was seated at the copy desk, composing headlines and photo captions, aching over my failure. I had bungled my twenties. I was abroad, lonely, stuck.

But after many dark months, I found myself imagining again. I strolled through Parisian streets, and characters strolled through my mind, sat themselves down, folded their arms before me, declaring, "So, do you have a story for me?"

I switched on my computer and tried once more.

This time, it was different. My previous attempt hadn't produced a book, but it had honed my technique. And I stopped fretting about whether I possessed the skill to become a writer, and focused instead on the hard work of writing. Before, I had winced at every flawed passage. Now, I toiled with my head down, rarely peeking at the words flowing across the screen.

I revised, I refined, I tweaked, I polished. Not until exhaustion--not until the novel that I had aspired to write was very nearly the one I had produced--did I allow myself to assess it.

To my amazement, a book emerged. I remain nearly incredulous that my plan, hatched over a decade ago, came together. At times, I walk to the bookshelf at my home in Italy, take down a copy of The Imperfectionists, double-check the name on the spine: Tom Rachman. Yes, I think that's me.

In the end, my travels included neither bullfights nor duels. And the book doesn't, either. Instead, it contains views over Paris, cocktails in Rome, street markets in Cairo; the ruckus of an old-style newsroom and the shuddering rise of technology; a foreign correspondent faking a news story, a media executive falling for the man she just fired. And did I mention a rather adorable if slobbery dog?

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his zinger of a debut, Rachman deftly applies his experience as foreign correspondent and editor to chart the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Chapters read like exquisite short stories, turning out the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper—and one woman who reads it religiously, if belatedly. In the opening chapter, aging, dissolute Paris correspondent Lloyd Burko pressures his estranged son to leak information from the French Foreign Ministry, and in the process unearths startling family fare that won't sell a single edition. Obit writer Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and sheer inky wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press; First Edition edition (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385343663
• ISBN-13: 978-0385343664
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (165 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

179 of 183 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Astoundingly Good Debut, March 5, 2010

By	Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Imperfectionists: A Novel (Hardcover)

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The Imperfectionists is flat-out one of the most enjoyable debut books I've read. This book has it all: writing that's so brilliant and astute that it's hard to believe this is Mr. Rachman's freshman effort, highly original and authentic characters, and a very timely theme: the demise of the printed newspaper.

The novel -- set in Rome -- is focused on the personal lives of various news reporters, executives, copy editors, and (in one case) a reader. Each chapter focuses on one individual and is a story all its own (think: Olive Kitteridge or In Other Rooms, Other Wonders); together, the whole is greater than the part of its sums and represents the trials, tribulations, and occasional rewards of those involved with an international English language newspaper.

All of these multi-faceted, interwoven stories sparkle in different ways. There is Lloyd, the down-on-his-luck Paris correspondent who is willing to play his own son for a byline. There's Arthur, the obituary writer and son of a famous journalist who sits on his laurels before his life is transformed by a heart-rendering tragedy. There's Abby -- aka Accounts Payable -- the financial officer who finds that one of her firings comes back to "bite" her in a most unexpected way. There's Herman, the overly hefty pussycat of a corrections editor with an 18,000-plus style guide he calls "The Bible"; woe is the unwitting writer who violates it! And Kathleen, the imperious and workaholic editor-in-chief who learns things about herself from a past lover that she would rather have not. And, in one of the most laugh-out-loud humorous of the stories, there's Winston, the naive Cairo stringer who is manipulated by his competitor Snyder, a middle-aged man with an over-the-top ego.

These and other "imperfect" characters come alive for the reader, often in unexpected ways. The situations portrayed are as real as life itself; it's obvious that Mr. Rachman cares about his characters and never sets them up as straw men to make a point or for comic relief. Between each chapter, the back-story of the newspaper is established, along with the everyday gripes of the employee -- a pitch-perfect backdrop for current events. The Imperfectionists is, in turn, poignant, strongly imagined, and endearing. I can't imagine it not being a winner.

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "So the paper took its own route, trusting reporters and editors to veer from the media pack, with varying success.", March 17, 2010

By	K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Imperfectionists: A Novel (Hardcover)

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There's the newspaper reader who compulsively reads every word of every Ott paper, but so slowly that she is more than a decade behind and "[s]he has been dreading tomorrow ever since it happened the first time." She is about to reach the April 24, 1994 edition. The world outside her home has churned on, of course, but she is in a self-imposed time warp and knows nothing of history beyond April 23, 1994.

There's the family man who adores spending time with his young daughter. He write obituaries for the paper, and one day he's asked by the editor-in-chief to take the train to Geneva, Switzerland and interview one Gerda Erzberger, an Austrian intellectual. She artlessly asks him, " 'Claw your way to the bottom, did you?' " He doesn't mind her dig because he doesn't aspire to anything other than what he currently has. But while he is in Gerda's house, everything changes....

Add select other characters:
-- the Paris correspondent who hasn't quite admitted he's past his prime
-- the paper's female chief financial officer who finds herself on a transatlantic flight seated next to a man she ordered fired
-- the wet-behind-the-ears fellow who competes for a stringer's job in Cairo
-- the copy editor who rashly tosses off an insult at the young man who has inherited the publisher's chair and awaits the email telling her she is through after nearly two decades
-- and that young publisher himself who avoids the paper as much as possible and desires only the company of his faithful little dog, Schopenhauer

Between these people's chapters that read more like short stories, even shorter italicized interludes trace the origins and development of this particular newspaper: a twelve-page, English language daily headquartered in Rome and staffed by ex-patriot Americans. Cyrus Ott, Atlanta-based businessman, founds the paper in 1954, having persuaded Betty and Leo Marsh to become, respectively, the news editor and editor-in-chief. However, Ott, arguably foreshadowing his grandson's (Schopenhauer's owner's) timidity, has doubts: " 'Perhaps I should not start this paper at all.' " He feels this way because he has a hidden, personal motive for proposing this venture. And perhaps, a paper founded on a guarded affair of the heart rather than a true zeal for reporting the news can only produce flawed lives for those who staff it and read it? Perhaps.

Author Tom Rachman has been a journalist and editor overseas, so a book about the lives of foreign stringers, devoted readers, and jaded newsroom employees is right up his alley. The Imperfectionists: A Novel covers people whose quirks, machinations, fates, and sorrows shape their lives as they doggedly put out at least one edition every day. The paper began modestly, managed a few prime years where it actually made a profit, and then went into decline with most print newspapers, choosing its own way, which meant, among other things, never having a website. But it is the unvarnished humanity of those who staffed (and subscribed to) it that stay with the reader. They aren't romantic figures or dashing heroes. They are people with fears, regrets, secrets, resentments, jealousies, and nearly unbearable hurts. Thanks to Rachman's abilities, the paper's dysfunctional, memorable bunch reminds us that most of us aren't hugely successful, beautiful, or happy, yet life still goes on at one level or another. This is a conglomeration of stories that gingerly coalesce to form a poignant picture of the imperfection that both plagues and yet sustains humanity -- all within the confines of a struggling newspaper in Rome. Rachman's novel is highly recommended.

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By the way, those captivated by THE IMPERFECTIONISTS might also appreciate the recently published The Room and the Chair, by Lorraine Adams, and The Broken Teaglass: A Novel, by Emily Arsenault. The former has a newsroom in common with Rachman's book. And the latter, although its stories are of lexicographers not newpeople, retains a similar melancholy "realism" regarding its characters.

56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, bitter, and elegiac, all at once, March 30, 2010

By	Silicon Valley Girl (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: The Imperfectionists: A Novel (Hardcover)

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"The Imperfectionists" may be the first truly original novel I've read this year. It's a series of linked short stories about people who work at (or are otherwise associated with) a Rome-based English-language newspaper that's obviously modeled on the International Herald Tribune. In between the "official" stories are short sections about the newspaper's founders.

Each of the character studies somehow manages to be simultaneously funny, tender, and slightly cruel. The protagonists' experiences range from the mildly depressing to the utterly tragic. Nobody gets what they think they want. And of course, their careers -- like their newspaper -- are all doomed. But it's all written with a kind of Gallic life-goes-on insouciance that makes it not only palatable but actually enjoyable to read. Think of it as a brilliant obit for the newspaper business.