The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman — A Book Recommendation

Zippy’s barking translation: I can get to the door in 5 seconds…and you?

Tom Rachman’s masterly first novel is perfect to pack for your next journey. Each of the novel’s sections sheds poignant and humorous light on a different, sometimes downtrodden, staff member at an English-language newspaper based in Rome. The author paints intimate portrayals of their lives through the decades, including how the paper came to be, the power struggle among journalists, editors, and their extended families, husbands, wives, and lovers. There are so many surprisingly genuine O. Henry moments in the novel that I reread them, with pleasure, just to see how the author accomplished it. The characters travel to France, Italy, and, even Egypt, where Rachman created two of the most memorable investigative journalists ever. This marvelous novel is one of the best books of the last year and is available in paperback and eBook.

Cyrus Ott had traveled here from his headquarters in Atlanta, leaving his businesses plus his wife and young son, solely for this meeting. On the passenger ship over, he had read their articles. Leo, the Rome correspondent for a Chicago newspaper, had mastered every cliché, his pieces unfolding in that journalese realm where refugees are endlessly flooding across borders, cities bracing for storms, voters heading for polls. Betty was a freelancer for U.S. women’s magazines, specializing in light humor pieces about life abroad and cautionary tales about American girls seduced by Italian skunks. In the old days, she’d had ambitions. Ott was sorry to see they had availed so little. – excerpt from The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

 

 

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