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Oct 06, 2011

K.D. rated it:

The Imperfectionists is perfect. At least for my taste. You may have a different opinion about this book, but for me, it is just way above the many other books I've read. It is entertaining. It is thought-provoking. It is heart-wrenching. It is funny. It is informative. It has everything I am looking for a contemporary fiction novel.

This book was one of the 100 Best Books in 2010 according to The New York Times. That and the very encouraging blurbs on both covers of the book made me More...

9 comments like (30 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2011

Karen rated it:

I whizzed through this highly entertaining debut by Tom Rachman wondering how on earth he'll be able to follow it. He apparently used a lot of his own experience of working for the International Herald Tribune here, so the question is where he will go for material next. The Imperfectionists is funny and tender both, Rachman's fondness for his characters with all their failings and foibles comes roaring through, and the man has an uncanny eye, oops, no, sorry that should be ear shouldn't it? for More...

6 comments like (10 people liked it)

May 19, 2010

Cynthia rated it:

This is an intriguing book though disconcerting. It’s set in the present or recent past at an English newspaper produced in Italy. As Elizabeth Strout did in “Olive Kitteridge”, last year’s Pulitzer winner, each story or chapter is seen through a different person’s viewpoint. In “Kitteridge” the theme was Olive and how others perceived her or she perceived them. In “The Imperfectionists” the paper is the common denominator. All the stories are the viewpoint of a Staffer.

Interspe More...

26 comments like (27 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Katie rated it:

I don't read a lot of books that aren't written for teenagers, but I read the reviews and the jacket on this one, and decided it sounded too good to pass up. Just a little over 24 hours later, I have finished reading it, and I am so glad it caught my eye.

This novel is a series of interconnected stories about the staff members of an English-language newspaper published in Rome. Each character's chapter begins with a headline and ends with a flashback to a significant moment in the ne More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

May 14, 2011

Will rated it:

This just in, Tom Rachman has given readers an exceptional set of stories about the birth and death of a newspaper, populated these tales with engaging characters and done so with great style and feeling.

The core here is a Rome-based English-language international newspaper. Rachman follows it from its inception in the 1950s to its 21st century demise. The story of this paper is the story of the people it touches, from founder to Obits editor, from editor in chief to Cairo stringer. More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2011

Maryann rated it:

The first reviews of this book made me eager to plunge in, but I was so disappointed that I withdrew my suggestion to nominate it for our book club! I said to myself at least twice while reading this, "I hate this book." In the last 50 pages, I found some enjoyable sequences, especially the air plane ride between Abbey and the man she had just fired. Other than that story, it was not very enjoyable reading, unless perhaps one works for a newspaper and enjoys the personalities in that More...

1 comment like (16 people liked it)

Oct 10, 2011

Teresa rated it:

3 and 1/2 stars

I've read a few reviews that mention this novel reads like a group of interrelated short stories and I can see that, though I don't really agree, as I don't believe the chapters are fully realized enough to stand on their own, nor were they meant to be, as they are intended to be 'chapters' in the history of the newspaper first and foremost.

The fully realized people that populate the novel are the strongest element. There is sympathy for even the most un More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Chance rated it:

Unlike a newspaper's human interest stories, which provide a glossy, manipulative look at the private lives of normal people, this book has a real interest in humans, albeit fictional ones. You see characters from multiple perspectives across the vignettes. There's no over-arching plot, just a series of articles. Just like in a newspaper. Quirky character Ornella de Montericchi, reader of the newspaper at the center of this book, "never learned the techniques of newspaper reading, so took i More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 15, 2010

Rachel rated it:

This isn't the worst thing I've read this year. Rachman, over and over again, convinced me to care about his characters and their relationships. I can't agree with Goodreads's assessment that the interspersed chapters on the history of the paper are dull; I found them warm and subtle. Neither, however, can I agree that Rachman "creates a diverse cast of fully realized characters." They may have diverse physical descriptions, but all speak with exactly the same voice. He even has one c More...

6 comments like (33 people liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Marialyce rated it:

It was a bit hard for me initially to get into this story but eventually I was able to enjoy the various characters that were together in the newspaper world that Rachman created. This was the author's first book, and he did a fine job writing of an Italian newspaper that is having a hard time staying afloat.

The book follows some quirky people who work for the paper from the guy who writes obituaries to a crazy war correspondent, who you just had to love he was so manipulative, to the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Lisa rated it:

An interesting read, especially since my father was something of a newspaper man. Not an international newspaper man, by any stretch of the imagination, just a reporter and then the editor of our local newspaper for a time when I was a child, but still...I remember listening to him express the language and concerns of journalism when I was growing up. For that reason alone, I think, The Imperfectionists had a nostalgic appeal to me. I didn't particularly like my father, but I did like the idea o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2011

Susann rated it:

**warning: somewhat spoilerish**
Interwoven stories about the staff at an English-language newspaper in Rome. At the start, I was impressed with Rachman's story-portraits and finished the first few chapters breathless for the next one. But the characters' all too human flaws gradually laid me low, until I wondered if and worried that we're all as sad-lonely-desperate-petty-conniving-selfish-cruel as these people are. I feel sorry for each character, some with sympathy and others with just pi More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2011

Laura rated it:

I'd been told that this was a book about a newspaper and the various types (sorry, no pun intended) employed there. That's not quite true - it's a series of short glimpses of the lives of different people employed at an unnamed international paper, more like short stories loosely woven together than they are a novel. That's not to say that these aren't interesting people, just that anyone looking for a combination of "The Front Page" and All the President's Men won't find that here.
More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2011

Pei Pei rated it:

I enjoyed the first two stories in this book, but as I kept reading I lost interest. The book couldn't seem to make up its mind about what it wanted to be. As separate stories, it was uneven. I enjoyed some stories and laughed and paused thoughtfully at surprising moments, but many of the stories weren't strong enough to stand alone; the dialogue was sometimes cringeworthy and actually seemed to get worse as the book progressed (the same is true, I think, of the general quality of the stories). More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Apr 19, 2011

Alana rated it:

So... I'm telling you now that my sudden and vehement dislike of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists is totally irrational and cannot be defended with any argument that paints me as a level-headed reviewer. Up until approximately five pages from the end of the novel, I would have given this a three-and-a-half-out-of-five star review... not necessarily because I enjoyed every single moment of the novel, but because I thought it was an interesting look at the fascinating and rather endangered indu More...

5 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Christina rated it:

Christopher Buckley and lots of other journalists and former journalists have been giving Tom Rachman's debut novel rave reviews.

I'm not really sure if it's earned them.

I think Buckley et. al. just like the book because it's about journalists. And journalists love reading books about journalists - especially when those books mock the people we spend most of our time bitching about. Rachman's book tells the stories of the obnoxious copy editor, the spinster reporter who da More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2011

Ruth rated it:

The notion of a narrative told from multiple points of view (although technically it's all one third-person omniscient narrator) is exciting to me, but can't say I thought Rachman pulled it off here. I was bored; found it a bit of a chore to finish; wasn't entranced by any of his characters or blown away by the way their lives intertwined. Parts of it were just silly (e.g. the paper's editor's lover's mother who 'had never learned to read a newspaper' and so was only up to reading the news from More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2011

Christy rated it:

Really? I'm surprised that the average rating for this is 3.5. When I first started reading it, I wasn't aware that each chapter would chronicle one of the people working at the paper, so I was a bit confused. I caught on after the second one and got completely absorbed. I can't say I've read a book this HUMAN in a long time. Each one of the characters was whacked out in some totally believable way, yet I could relate to each of them in some weird way. I loved the inner dialogue of some of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 27, 2011

John rated it:

Quite well-written, indeed the characters were about as diversified as it gets (although no explicitly gay ones, just a coyly implied closet case). I would've given a fourth star, but it's just so damned consistently grim; a couple of the stories have happy endings, but the rest are pretty much downers. I confess I didn't read the italicized backstory between each chapter, of the paper's founding, at all.

Recommended as something to read here-and-there, not straight through.

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 19, 2011

Tayde rated it:

Indispensable para aquel que conozca esas emociones al límite que sólo se viven en la redacción de un periódico.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 03, 2011

Layla added it

To say I enjoyed this book would be a great understatement. I I loved this book. Tom Rachman's characters come to life in this amazing debut novel that revolves around the 50 year span of a small international, English-language daily newspaper located in Rome. Over the span of fifty years we meet the founder and publisher Leo Ott, a rich businessman with a passion to have the paper succeed despite having a family back in the States. We meet copy editor Ruby Zaga, who despite 2o years of service More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Sam rated it:

This book reminds me of that scene from The Green Hornet where the camera starts following one character, then the screen splits into two when he meets his friend, and then each of their screens split into two, etc, etc, following all these people while still being one consecutive shot. No? You don't remember that scene? You didn't see the Green Hornet? Oh, it was actually pretty entertaining. When you go in with low expectations, you might get a nice surprise. Oh, you hate Seth Rogen? Nevermind More...

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Jan 30, 2012

Elizabeth rated it:

Picked this book up in the airport, as I do most of my random reads.

First the positives, of which there are many:
The writing was lovely- and I'm torn between giving this a 3 or 4 star. Purely on the literary quality, this was a strong 4-star read. Tom Rachman has a wonderful way with words, and is able to succinctly and eloquently describe a situation in a way that both is familiar to us all in a personal way and also gives you a deep window into the character's inner working More...

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Jan 09, 2012

Jsavett1 rated it:

Thankfully, Tom Rachman’s writing in The Imperfectionists contains little of its title’s promise; its characters on the other hand, clearly deserve the moniker, though, it’s important to say, no more than any of us do.

Though Rachman’s book is subtitled “a novel,” I feel, cynically perhaps, that this had more to do with marketing that accurate genre identification. The book consists of eleven short vignettes, each exploring one of the characters that work at a quickly failing, but onc More...

0 comments like

Jan 03, 2012

Jill rated it:

Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists is a mixed genre work, having the characteristics of both a novel and a collection of short stories. The unifying entity of the book is a fictional international English-language newspaper, published in Rome, Italy. Rachman tells us that the name of the owner-publisher (Ott) appears in the masthead of the paper, but he never gives the paper itself a name.

Each chapter is a vignette that follows an individual owner, employee, or reader of the newspap More...

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Jan 02, 2012

Ben rated it:

Interesting storytelling device, in that each chapter is presented from the perspective of a different employee or member of an international newspaper housed in Rome - some even from different time periods over 3 generations of family ownership. (I liked that each chapter is titled and bylined as an article written by and pertaining to the respective narrator or protagonist.) All of the characters overlap to some degree, and begin to blend their stories with the rest, so the further you get in More...

0 comments like

Dec 31, 2011

Brian rated it:

The Imperfectionists is an impressive debut novel, although as I read it I could easily imagine that I was reading the scripts for episodes in a TV mini-series. The author is a product of cable TV as well as possessing an immense amount of knowledge of the workings of an international newspaper. Each ‘episode’ unfolded as an interlude in the life of a staff member of the unnamed international newspaper with headquarters in Rome (except for one person peripherally involved with the paper). The no More...

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Dec 31, 2011

Karen rated it:

Here I am on New Year's Eve writing the review of my least favorite book of the year. Contrasting the various chapter titles--many of which are heart-wrenching current events untouched within the chapters--with the fatuous, self-involved and mean-spirited characters left me completely detached from this book. How could anyone think this contrast a good idea? Mogidishu--really? Is this a writerly conceit? After chapter titles, let's attend to a bit of office nastiness and then hit the wine bar More...

1 comment like

Dec 07, 2011

Smaggletooth rated it:

I admired Rachman's effortless, efficient, and funny style throughout, and although I initially enjoyed the vignette structure, I ended up feeling manipulated by it. The characters' sections often ended with punchlines or unresolved cliffhangers, and I felt that my sympathy and my curiosity was being abused. I think, for example, the challenge for a writer is less about getting Abbey Pinnola into a compromising position than about dealing with the fallout. What does she say? What does she do? Th More...

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Oct 25, 2011

Mary added it

Reminiscent of the Pulitzer-winning OLIVE KITTERIDGE in that this is not a short story collection yet not quite a novel (although it calls itself a novel). It is a series of astute, sometimes amusing, sometimes almost troubling vignettes about the idiosyncratic employees of a tiny English-language newspaper based in Rome, with interludes about the newspaper's founding in the 1950's by an eccentric millionaire. Each chapter stands alone, yet they all work together to portray a particular time i More...

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