Will I sing its praises as one of the best books of the year? Yes, I will. Tom Rachman essentially wrote a collection of short stories all held together by the fact these folks work for an English language newspaper in Rome. None of these characters seems to have a completely functional personality. And, lets face it, most offices have its share of strange people. Newsrooms might have a bigger proportion just because of the nature of the job. Most journalists are glorified gossips. You have to lack a certain amount of shame to but into people's business.
You can think what you want about the media. Again, I work for a newspaper so I have my bias on this. The world of journalism could use a good shake up. Never would I refer to all those pundits out there as journalists. But, in the end, people want to make money and the "journalism" that is out there sells. You want something better? Stop watching the crap that's out there.
OK, that was my preachy moment. Back to The Imperfectionists. Racham really put together a collection of short stories with the newspaper serving as the unifying element. There is the hard-nose editor with a fairly decent family life; the copy editor that lives alone and makes her family believe her life is much more glamorous than it actually is (it's not at all); the accountant that feels the news staff doesn't understand the newspaper's situation; the editor in chief, an ambitious woman that chose her career over having a personal life; and a subscriber that reads every word of the paper, to the point that she is still over a decade behind on the news.
There are other characters, but you get the picture. You would think that working as a journalist in Rome would be a dream job. This book made me want to rethink my chosen field of work. It's realistic in that the relationship between journalists and journalism tends to be, shall we say, dramatic. We've all had our hearts broken by an industry that's intensely competitive and that seems to focus less on finding truth than in pushing certain agendas. The characters in this book have plenty of heartbreak to go around, in and outside the paper.
The reader can see what will happen when it comes to light that the paper has no online presence. After all, we've all seen the dismal numbers for most publications even if they have a strong online product. But Rachman makes them all sympathetic, even when you don't want to feel anything remotely like sympathy towards these folks. They are painfully human. But that's what makes this a fantastic read.
Stylistically, these episodes read almost like different sections of a play. Rachman uses quite a lot of dialogue. It's almost as if he doesn't want to interrupt these people's lives with narrative. If you're looking for detailed descriptions of Rome or Paris or other locations in the book, you will be disappointed. But the locales aren't the focus anyway. The characters make you think: could this be you?
Very worth reading. Considering that The Imperfectionists has been on several best of 2010 lists, Rachman's next book will probably find a lot of eagerly anticipating readers.
Next up: The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa
