Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists

I loved this book. I bought it in Portland, at Powell's Bookstore, which is now amongst my favourite bookstores in the world, where this was displayed prominently in the fiction section and classified as an 'Old Favourite'. It was published in 2011, so really it's not so old; but I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before. Presumably if I lived in the United States I would have. It was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times Bestseller.

Rachman is a journalist who has been both a foreign correspondent and an editor of The International Herald Tribune. This book is loosely based on the heritage of that paper. It is set largely in Rome, and describes the lives of ex-pat journos working on the paper whilst leading ordinary human existences in Europe.

For me, the astonishing success of this book is the fact that Rachman pulls off a novel about the newspaper industry which tells simultaneously the story of the historical rise and fall of a particular paper, and the story of the journalists and staffers employed by that paper at a given point in time (the present, as it were). Each chapter title consists of a headline, and each chapter focuses in on the life of one of the staffers. But at the end of each chapter is another mini-chapter which follows the historical life of the paper from the 1950s to its demise in the present day, as it changes hands, as its publishers grow old and hand the paper over to the next generation, as the print media environment undergoes major shifts and changes. By the end, we have in effect read two books in one. As Christopher Buckley of the New York Times Book Review says, "I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off." For such a young man, Rachman is extraordinarily accomplished.

My grandfather worked in print media (magazines), and newspapers and magazines (as well as books) were ever-present in my European childhood home. The newspaper we read as a family was The International Herald Tribune. So I suppose I was always going to be a sucker for this book, also because the best job I have ever had was working in newspapers. I am a lawyer, not a journalist, but working as an editorial lawyer alongside editors and writers seemed to fulfil several of my career ambitions at once and I absolutely loved it. I loved the buzz of the newsroom floor and the frantic rush as the print deadline approached each day, and I loved the fact that history hung tangibly in the air. It was easily possible, looking around the newsroom, to envisage the olden days of typewriters and the haze of cigarette smoke. After being taken on a tour of the offsite printing presses (a memory I will always treasure), it was possible, also, to imagine what it used to be like in the building I worked in, when the printing presses sat in the basement (which now houses a library), and staff throughout the building could hear and feel them running, and when it was in fact possible to run downstairs and yell "Stop the presses!" and have that mean something.

Losing that job to the same fate that Rachman describes in his book (financial struggles of the paper at the hands of a rapidly changing media environment, and a re-structure that had editorial legals outsourced to an external law firm) was heart-breaking, and I found reaching the end of this book similarly emotional.

Rachman is a brilliant writer. I became deeply absorbed in every chapter of the book. He writes extraordinarily well in a cacophony of voices - young girl, older woman, old men, younger men. All perspectives were convincing. Not an easy feat for any writer. I started caring about each character almost as soon as a new chapter started. Leo Ott, the wealthy entrepeneur who started the paper as a labour of love for a woman who would never know, even after his death, just how much she was adored. Arthur Gopal, the obituary writer whose job is unimportant to him whilst he is in the company of his young daughter Pickle, who reminds him of the more visceral joys in life, but whose life changes irrevocably in the most heart-wrenching way. Winston Cheung, the rookie journo trying to make a go of it reporting from Cairo, only to be bulldozed by veteran hack Snyder. Ornella de Montericchi, a woman whose lonely life gains meaning from her methodical reading of every word in every edition of the paper, and whose world collapses when the paper does, too. And finally Oliver Ott, the grandson of the paper's founder, whose only friend is a dog by the name of Schopenhauer.

It was interesting to read this novel so soon after reading Egan's a visit from the goon squad, which I enjoyed immensely but failed to wholeheartedly connect with on account of the unusual and disjointed way the story was told. Rachman too uses a method that might have readers proclaiming the book to be a series of short stories rather than a novel, but because the protagonists of all of his stories occupy the same space (the newspaper) and the same narrative present, they are united in a way that Egan's characters were not. And in any case, the protagonist of this novel is actually the newspaper itself, a device that works wonderfully well.

Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5. I loved it. Of course, it may have resonated with me more than with most people, so perhaps take that into account if you are considering picking it up.

Cons: The last chapter ends with an event that is brutal and shocking and unexpected. I think the brutality here is intended by Rachman to provide a mirror image of some sort between life itself and the life of the paper - so that the impact of the death of the paper - on the characters who populate it, but also as a deeply significant cultural development - is felt keenly even by readers without a newspaper background or a particular interest in print media. It works, but it is deeply unsettling and I think some readers might be put off by it.

Note: The edition I read has an interview at the end between Rachman and Malcolm Gladwell, a hero of mine. What a fabulous bonus! This is a terrific interview and such a worthwhile read. So many great observations were made by these erudite men in conversation, on the topic of writing, in particular.

For example: "Writing (and reading) is a sort of exercise in empathy, I think. In life, when you encounter people, you and they have separate trajectories, each person pushing in a different direction. What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the uncommon position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives." Beautiful! And the two men then proceed to discuss whether or not this sympathy for fictional characters translates into greater sympathy for people in life. A great defence of fiction.