There’s Hardy, a desperate and plain woman who frantically cooks for and clings to a bum of a man who uses her and even steals from her because she’s afraid of being alone.
To make matters worse, there’s sort of an “old boys club” mentality behind a lot of the stereotypes he feeds us, which is unsurprising given the industry he’s coming from, but usually good writing attempts to break these things down as opposed to bolstering them up. They are one-dimensional and in the glimpse we get of them, there’s no way to penetrate into their minds. The profiles of our imperfect characters in The Imperfectionists, while numerous, offer little beyond the surface. In terms of substance, the novel is actually quite lazy, and he rests too comfortably on a some idea he has in his mind of flat, stereotypical people. That said, of course there’s a “but” and it’s a big one. Rachman’s strong points are entirely technical - solid pacing, a broad range of distinct characters, snappy and largely believable dialogue, and the novel also benefits from Rachman’s journalism background as a foreign correspondent and editor, by lending the events and atmosphere of its stories believability and credibility. It’s also sort of a depressing book in general, especially as it wears on and the paper’s financial situation worsens. These profiles, however, lack substance - and in the end the book amounts to a largely useless collection of stereotypes. The novel is told in a series of intertwined vignettes, each profiling one person related to the struggling paper with tiny reveals along the way, culminating into a larger story at the end. Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists takes us into the inner workings and private lives of a cadre of professionals at an English-language newspaper based in Rome. I did not like this book and was, in fact, offended by it.
If you didn’t already, take a look at the subtitle. By Jennifer Marie Lin on Dec 13th, 2014 (Last Updated May 20th, 2021)
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