The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman

General info: Novel/collection of short stories, published in 2010

Storytelling: 9 – I love the title of this collection. You get exactly what you paid for – a collection/novel based on a crew of perfectly imperfect people. I realize that most every author approaches human flaws on some level, but I’ve never seen imperfection of people crafted in such an interesting and witty way, while moving along the story in a convincing and humorous way. However, I supposed I should back up and explain a bit.
I call this a “novel/collection” because it is a bit of both. The story focuses on the life and times of a collection of ex-pats working for an English-language newspaper in Rome. Loosely woven throughout the book are excerpts describing the life of the millionaire family that starts the paper and ultimately kills it, but the bulk of the novel are the brilliantly wrought short stories. These depict a day or two in the lives of the employees of the paper who all happen to be completely imperfect. We meet the Obituary Writer, the Editor-in-Chief, the Corrections Editor and even the Chief Financial Officer. Each of them are wholly and miserably flawed, but each in a unique and achingly wonderful way. Rachman blended wretchedness and wit together in such a genius way that I felt a bit astounded as I closed this book.
Each story takes the reader on a separate little adventure, such as a journey to Switzerland to gather a pre-emptive obituary, to a lonely hotel room on New Years Eve, or through the internal workings of a man who’s found his much younger girlfriend is cheating on him with a guy from her yoga class. Don’t get me wrong; the content of this book was completely depressing if you take it all at face value, but Rachman impressed me greatly with the variety and creativity of his tales and even more with the near-perfect movement of the plot(s). He provided the perfect amount of detail, employed the ideal pace, and crafted sparking but realistic characters. I sailed through this book with ease and felt captivated through the duration.
I have to dock one point, however, for the way the book ended. Call me biased, but there is a needless animal death toward the very end that left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, the paper shuts down at the end of the book leaving all of the characters to scatter to the wind. Rachman tacks on a small chapter at the end detailing where everyone ends up, which I didn’t like so much. I felt that leaving this bit to the imagination of the reader would have added to the unpredictable and darkly playful nature of the book.

Writing: 10 – Holy crap! Where did this guy come from? I love new writers that bust onto the scene with a gusto and get a thumbs up from the New York Times. (For the record, I live and die by the New York Times Book Review. Once in a blue moon, I’ll disagree with them, but for the most part they are pretty trustworthy. Deeming something a New York Times Bestseller, however, means diddly squat. I do not care that the mass American public likes a book – that usually just makes me skeptical of something)
The prose of this book was delightful in its simple elegance. It’s evident that Rachman has lived the life of an American journalist in Europe, but he doesn’t write like a journalist here, which is what most surprised me. His writing is clever, insightful, and detail-oriented without being cumbersome. There are a few brilliant passages that are almost poetic in their beauty, and then the next page will include some frank descriptions that make you snort you’re laughing so hard. I loved the graceful mobility of this book.
Most of all, I loved Rachman’s wit and his grasp of flawed humanity. For example, why doesn’t anyone else write about the fact that people get lazy and eat a can of beans for a meal, or drink themselves to sleep on a weeknight? Similarly, Rachman approaches how utterly ridiculous insecure women get when any male pays them attention, he examines how power structures can be completely opposite at home and in the office, and he taps into how getting what we want is precisely what we don’t want. I could go into more detail but hey, you have to read the book, and I’m just going to start babbling.

Characters: 9 – The diversity of the characters contained in such a short book (a mere 269 pages) is what truly amazed me. I know I’m gushing about this novel, but I truly found it exceptional in many ways. There were many introduced, but having them all sectioned off neatly into their own little chapters made them easy to keep track of. Rachman cleverly references other members of the paper in other short stories, some of them before we meet them and some of them after, and I believe he did this in a fun “a ha!” way. They are all connected but it’s evident that none of them really know anything about each other. (Then again, isn’t this sadly true of any workplace?)
At first glance, all of these characters appear pathetic, but that would be incorrect; they are simply human. Rachman casts them in a harsh light and oddly enough, I felt myself connecting in some way with each and every person. They ran the gamut, from controlling narcissist to self-loathing mega-introvert, but at the end of each story I felt a little bit attached to all of them, even if they drove me completely crazy. I know this book got a lot of criticism for making the characters too abysmal and unlikeable, but I didn’t see it that way. They were simply honest, and I know a lot of readers don’t want that and are instead looking for an entertaining and morally satisfying break from reality. I think anyone who says they didn’t find a single one of these characters relatable is completely lying to themselves or lives on a cloud.
Again I have to dock one point for this book, simply because I would have liked to see a few more rays of sunshine sprinkled in. I think showing some hope or a positive light would not have subtracted from the authenticity here, considering such a large cast of characters cannot all be having such a bad day during their selected stories. I get that showing imperfection was the point of the novel, and if it isn’t already obvious I loved this book, but Rachman sure did nail you with a lot of depressing realism. I believe that humans are as flawed as they are in this book, but I also believe that they are innately good, which you don’t see much of here. Maybe Rachman’s harsh light was a bit too harsh, but only a tiny bit so.

Best part: Hmm. Tricky. I would have to say my favorite part was the short story about Ornella de Monterecchi, a faithful reader of the paper for years and years. She is one of those lonely old souls with money who goes about intentionally making everyone’s life miserable and terrorizing the maid. Most interestingly, she insists on reading each paper cover to cover, which she can’t complete in a day. After a few decades she is still going chronologically and remains stuck in 1994 even though it’s actually 2007. Additionally, she insists that anyone coming into her house not discuss any present day news. The most terrifying part of this is that I’m sure there are real life people out there in this world who are this nuts.

Recommend to: I probably wouldn’t recommend this book to people who are depressed or going through a hard time. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d recommend this to anyone else.

Reminded me of: Zadie Smith

How I would murder the main character: Considering the main character is basically any depressing soul working at the paper, I'd likely push them into a particularly painful part of the newspaper printer machine thing (whatever that's called) and then pour garbanzo beans on them.

Sexy parts: There are affairs and wayward romances all over this novel. Rachman never goes into anything graphic (darn) but he perfectly depicts how strange romance can be sometimes and how we can be compelled toward the worst people. Now that I mull it over, most of the sexy/love-related/marriage-related parts of this book were completely depressing aside from a few vague accounts of happy marriages. Maybe Rachman recently had his heart broken. ..

To sum it up: A captivating and eccentric collection of stories examining human foible and folly.

Overall: 9.5