
Tom Rachman, a former editor at the Paris branch of the International Herald Tribune, uses his experiences to wonderful effect in his debut novel, a sprawling book that vividly portrays a motley crew of characters working at an English-language newspaper in Rome. Told in interlocking vignettes, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS presents an eccentric ensemble cast, including a tyrannical editor-in-chief wounded by her open marriage, an indolent obituary writer shocked into self-awareness by a death in his own life, a feckless publisher who allows his family business to fall into ruin, and a fresh-from-college kid who realizes he can`t hack it in the reporter profession. Each story is fresh and fully realized in its own right, and the cumulative effect is an evocative depiction of a frenzied and eccentric industry in danger of extinction due to the rise of the internet.