The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I always wanted to be Christiane Amanpour, international correspondent, foreign reporter.  A career to dream of with exotic locations and multilingual people breaking international news –the disasters, war and brutality notwithstanding.  Don’t get me wrong, I had my own great career, filled with wildly creative people, its own exotic locales and many rewards. But I sometimes still wonder…

Which is why I was drawn to this novel about a struggling English language newspaper and its employees based in Rome.  Just take a look at the cover and the spectacular acclaim.

So why did it take me over two months to finish?

Sometimes funny, often heartbreaking, the individual stories, each of which focuses in on an individual employee and their unique job at the paper, are interspersed with short passages letting us into the paper’s history and the publishers’ struggles to keep it running. The paper is hardly at the cutting edge of technology–it doesn’t even have a website.

There is Lloyd, the beaten-down Paris correspondent who is willing to trick his own son for a byline. Then copy editor Ruby who has a fondness for her routines that only somewhat mask her constant fear of being fired.   There’s Abby — aka Accounts Payable — the financial officer who finds herself on a plane seated next to an employee she laid off .  In one of most humorous  stories, you’ll meet Winston, the naive Cairo stringer who is manipulated by a wily, egotistical competitor.  You’ll also read about the corrections editor, who has painstaking compiled a 18,000-word plus style guide he calls “The Bible”; woe to the unwitting writer who violates it! You’ll meet Kathleen, the arrogant, workaholic editor-in-chief who learns things about herself from a past lover that she would rather not know.  There’s even a loyal reader, who has read each line of every issue since the beginning and as a result is far behind, stuck in the past and won’t let today’s paper (or any current news) into her life.  

Sounds like fun, such a great collection of people, but we know from the title The Imperfectionists, that these are going to be imperfect people.   Mr. Rachman goes even further to give these imperfect characters fears, greed, regrets, secrets, resentments, jealousies, and nearly unbearable sorrows.  These are beautiful character sketches, filled with adultery, job loss, co-dependency, manipulation and loss of prestige and pay. The author does give us consistently beautiful writing and has an ear for gripping conversation. 

But it was the theme of The Imperfectionists that grew weary — the world is a mess and nothing can or will make things better. Does no one care about their job?  Does anyone care about the paper?   Doesn’t anyone take delight in the fact they are living and working in Rome?  (Though it is based in Rome, we see nothing of the beautiful city, culture or people – as there was no sense of place.  We could be reading about Kansas City.)

I would just start to get interested in a beautifully drawn character and then slam– something horrible happens and you’re on to the next poor soul.  At first this was intriguing – never knowing what the talented Mr. Rachman will do next.  But towards the latter half of the novel, I started to dread the next meanness – the next cruelty.  With a novel based on international reporting, one expects a share of atrocities and horrors, but this is all about misguided people and their frailties – not about politics or world issues.

I can recommend this book for its excellent writing, pitch perfect dialogue and some brilliant characterizations.  And, in my on-going effort to get away from my “Pollyanna-ish” reading comfort zone, I’m glad* to have read, and most importantly, finished this novel.

But I must admit that I’m a bit schizophrenic regarding The Imperfectionists.  Early on, I was gobbling down the pages, chuckling at each character, but toward the end, I could barely stand it.  So little redemption, so little hope – it became a forced march.

*Pollyanna  — “glad” – get it? Sometimes, I just crack myself up.