Ebook Review: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman hits a place dear to me - newspapers. I spent my college years learning to be a newspaper man in one of the best damn college newspapers in the country, The Daily Iowan. But, like the paper and staffers in Tom Rachman's novel, my journalism career was doomed to a short life. Fortunately, my life isn't quite as dysfunctional and, well, imperfect. I think we both have just a little regret, though.

The book assembles several short narratives from a different characters' perspectives. Here are short, usually tragic stories of, say, the ambitious obituary writer, the hapless news editor, the copy desk old maid, and even the obsessive-compulsive newspaper reader among others. All work at or read a once-great international English-language newspaper headquartered in Rome.

Between the short fiction for each of these journalistic  has-beens, Rachman insperses vignettes of the paper's history that serve as its obituary. It is the kind of inbred jouarnlistic enterprise whom all the participants refer to simply as "the paper." (Say no more; I know the kind.)

Rachman's title is clever. They characters are all imperfection personified, and they're more than slightly obsessive. Yes, the thing unfolds in a kind of broad stroke imperfect tense -- things that have happened with indefinite endings. Characters with action, but without "tense," so to speak. Rachman's too good at noting the idiosyncracies of copy editing -- and copy editors -- to avoid such playful spirit in the book.

It works. But, there's something off kilter about these frustrating messes of people, as though the twisted, tragic endings for each chapter and character came out of a modern day O. Henry school. Oh, the trajedies aren't surprise endings. Some are predictable. Rather, Rachman paints an expatriate life that the imperfectionist fools manage to let slip through their fingers.

The book does have an incredible sense of both time and place. Rachman, who worked as an international journalist and still lives in Rome, paints a wonderfully mundane, vivid locale of Rome. His characters walk his streets, and it shows. There, too, are wonderful juxtapositions of actual events in precisely the right time. The novel's set around 2007, and headlines bubble up through the work, giving the characters a grounding in the real world we all know and fret about. Iraq war references abound, as do events like the Virginia Tech shooting.

That juxtaposition is Rachman's real achievement here. He crafts believable characters living in a dynamic world. But, he doesn't cast them larger than life, caught up in those events. He lets them be their imperfect selves, worried about a bit of flab or sucking on hard candies, or lonely at night. When their imperfections aren't frustrating (and they are, those poor, imperfect bastards), they're vulnerable and endearing. Cheer for them, anyway, won't you?

In each tale, though, there isn't much time to cheer. The stories are brief, as is the book. It's a fine, quick read, but Rachman rushes at times. Dialogue is more reported than scored, which may be the effect Rachman aimed for. It's a newpaper pace that doesn't let the characters breathe.

And, taken as a whole, the strung-together short works stumble their way to the newspaper's demise, yet those characters never realize their fates. The book works as a novel mainly in name. Yes, characters "cross" one another's narratives, thus tying the work together. But, its differences from an anthology are sparse.

In the end, it's a wistful look at the tough times newspapers face in a new digital world, and the human mess those stubborn old journalists make of things. I feel bad for them ... almost.

The Imperfectionists: A Novel: C+