esrosedotblog

PERFECTION

I just finished, belatedly, Tom Brachman's The Imperfectionists

This is a great book and I recommend it highly to anyone who wants a "good read" combined with a high quality piece of literary fiction.

It is a set of stories about people, most of whom work in an international newspaper headquartered in Rome.

Thinly disguised, this could be the Herald Tribune which was headquartered in Paris which I read thoroughly when I was overseas.

Rachman worked for the AP in Italy and the Tribune in, obviously, Paris so it rings of the truth at all levels.

The stories are interlinked although it is not obvious as you start reading the book. It is like a tapestry woven before our eyes. Nicely done. Most of the action is away from the paper in people's private lives. But everything converges one way or another.

I read a review where the guy said he had to read it again to see how Rachman did it.

I think that I will do the same.

The stories are funny, sad, shocking. Only shocking when he has subtly built our emotional investment in each person so skillfully. Story by story. Without our knowing it.

And there is a lot of info on newspapers which will be extinct soon.

The time is now.

Although he weaves in a backstory about the evolution of the paper from the fifties to present.

A big, big book now in paperback.

Labels: books