The Imperfectionists

To be at the top of one's game, employed in a dynamic workplace, in an industry on the rise, with one's personal life in harmony -- that is the perfection to which many professionals aspire.

But what of the opposite: of being washed up, working someplace dysfunctional, in an industry on the decline, while one's private life slowly falls apart? Wouldn't this qualify, in contrast, as the height of imperfection?

Such themes lie at the heart of The Imperfectionists, a novel by Tom Rachman that has received no shortage of critical acclaim, all well-deserved. The book is largely about the final days of an English-language newspaper headquartered in Rome, told through the perspectives of the broadsheet's various staff. The beauty, however, lies in its understated complexity, with Rachman methodically peeling away layers in order to give readers a more nuanced picture of the events that are unfolding.

This is achieved partly through strong character development. Indeed, Rachman's characters in The Imperfectionists are written so well that it is hard not to empathize with them and feel for their struggles. Whether it's the intelligent business correspondent who embraces the dead-end relationship she finds herself in, or the obituary writer who discovers his own writing talents following unmistakeable tragedy, or the talented editor-in-chief who appears to have it all together but is quietly falling apart, each of Rachman's characters has an uncanny human quality about them -- imperfection? -- that is utterly believable.

Yet the novel also shines because of the clever way that Rachman tells the story of how this fictional newspaper came to be. For the most part, the novel takes place in the present; but with each chapter, readers are treated to episodes from various points in the broadsheet's history. This serves to make an already compelling story even more so, as it comes to light that the newspaper was but the end result of one man's imperfect expression of his passion, which perhaps destined the entire enterprise for failure from the very start.

There's no denying the timeliness of The Imperfectionists, what with so many newspapers struggling to survive in the Internet age. This is certainly part of its appeal. But there is really more to it than that: it is a good book, perhaps even a great one, a reminder that even in imperfection there is beauty and dignity, too.