Perfect sketches

KARACHI: Tom Rachman’s first novel The Imperfectionists has a tight little story cycle based around a flailing English newspaper in Rome, run by Americans. Fortunately, Rachman is able to deliver on this engaging premise. Each chapter is about one member of the nameless newspaper’s staff (and in one case, an avid reader), and is tied to the next character/chapter by a little vignette describing the newspaper’s initial set up by the mysterious Cyrus Ott. The vignettes have their own peculiar tinge, a sort of Citizen Cane-esque pathos to them, each giving a possible hint at why the newspaper exists at all.

Rachman’s gives us 11 characters, each sharply and cleanly defined by their past, their surroundings and by the newspaper itself. From the sad little life of an ageing journalist desperate to make some cash and be on the front page again, to the cold as ice editor-in-chief whose marriage turns out to be a sham, leaving her broken and vulnerable, each character is perfect in his or her own way — at times hilarious, at times pathetic and depressing but always human, and so perfectly crafted. Many journalists will be able to relate directly with most of Rachman’s cast, because if they haven’t been one of these people, they have surely known someone who has. The paper’s irascible corrections editor is a particularly touching character. While he is incredibly detailed at finding mistakes in the copy (Saddam Hussain is ‘Sadism Hussain’ and Tony Blair is a recently deceased Japanese dignitary), it takes him a lifetime to see the flaws in a friend that no one else holds in high regard.

Each of Rachman’s characters hide a deep loneliness and a very innate desire for belonging, companionship and love regardless of the formal facades they put up at the newspaper. This is nothing new, no, but it is so well written with so much clarity of vision and insight that each story fiercely holds its own. In fact, each individual chapter can easily be read as a stand-alone short story, many with a twist in the tail, similar to Roald Dahl’s collections Kiss, Kiss and Switch Bitch.

The newspaper of course is a character unto itself — this need not even be said. Like many of its employees it has a glorious past but is now simply treading water, making just enough of an effort to survive but nothing more. Its readership is ageing and dying off, it can not afford the stringers it needs, it is full of factual errors and it doesn’t even have a website. The paper is seen through the eyes of its various employees, and is at times a lifeline, at times a noose. For the obituary writer it is a means to kill time before heading off to be with his child, until a death in his family pushes him inadvertently into real journalism. For the finance head the paper is a failing business that she can not protect, just as she cannot protect herself when faced in intimate quarters with a man she has just fired.

The question that comes up again and again during the reading of The Imperfectionists is how has someone so young managed to write so effortlessly and capture so perfectly the hearts, minds and the humanity of so many different characters? With the production rights for the book scooped up recently by Brad Pitt, there’s no doubt the world will be seeing more of The Imperfectionists. Rachman’s narrative strength and his ease with dialogue easily make him a voice to watch out for.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2010.