The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

From the jacket Powells: “Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it — and themselves — afloat. Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines.” [Dear publishers: I really hate it when you fill the backs of your book jackets with quotes instead of a synopsis of the book. If I hadn’t already been aware of this book, I absolutely never would have bought it.]

My take: I held off several days after reading this book to try to collect my thoughts, but five days out and I’m still at a loss. I started hearing buzz about this book last summer shortly after the hardcover came out. As so often happens, I filed it away to look for at the library and then promptly forgot about it until the holiday season, when I was tasked with buying presents for two old ladies who exchange gifts without actually really knowing one another or doing their own shopping. I contemplated it then, but ultimately went with a different book for each of them. However, when I saw that the author was coming to my local bookstore for a reading associated with the release of the paperback, I was intrigued.

Tom Rachman seems unassuming and bashful and charming (although whether he is any of those things I leave up to people who’ve spent more than a minute with him) and the part of the book he read underscored my excitement at reading the book. I jumped right in.

The book itself, although described by many, including its publisher, as a novel is, in fact, a series of interconnected short stories, each focusing on a different person involved with a failing English-language newspaper based in Rome. Although each person interacts with the newsroom in some way (some are reporters, others editors, and a few outside the production of the daily paper), the focus of each vignette is on the character’s personal life and how that can affect their work life (and vice versa). Each character is individual and multi-layered and both likable and unlikable at the same time, and I suspect it is this that has garnered Rachman’s debut novel such praise. It’s a difficult skill for any writer to achieve at any point, let alone in their first published book.

And, yet…

I don’t think I liked it.

Have you ever watched The Office? It’s filled with characters you can sometimes sympathize with, but in general you don’t necessarily like, with the exception of Jim and Pam. This book was a lot like that, but without Pam or Jim to give you a clear protagonist to root for. You could make the argument that the newspaper itself should be what you’re cheering for, but by the end, I didn’t even really care if it survived, even if it was the major force in the lives of the dozen characters I’d just spent time with.

I admit to ambivalence about the book because I’m not sure I would have had the same reaction if I hadn’t read the final two chapters. I felt like these two stories veered off into darker places than I wanted to commit to, and the final piece, in particular, left me feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach. Without these final pieces, I can maybe see having liked the book overall, and just finding pieces of it a bit stressful, rather than leaving me with a distressing taste in my mouth that pollutes my whole opinion of the novel. [I had a similar reaction to The Elegance of the Hedgehog when I read it last year.]

I guess, in the end, I still don’t know what to tell you.

Pages: 283

The majority of the books I read are from the library, which is unsurprising, given how much I read. What I come home with tends to include a combination of random picks from the shelves and displays, books I’ve come in intending to track down, and books I’ve put on hold through the library’s web site (when you have 25 branches around the city, it can take a few days for end up someplace nearby).

This week, in addition to the afore-reviewed The Westing Game, I also brought home:

• Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which I’ve been meaning to read for a couple of years (this is at least the second time I’ve checked it out from the library)
• Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant, which I heard about from Nan (I thought about buying it for Gramma for Christmas, but wasn’t totally convinced it would be her cup of tea without reading a bit of it)
• Leslie Connor’s Crunch, which I overheard recommended by a bookstore employee at Christmas and which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils (plus it has a bike on the cover)
• Michael Grant’s The Magnificent 12, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils
• Cornelia Funke’s Reckless, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils (and which I notice Grey Kitten just finished)
• Tara Kelly’s Harmonic Feedback, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils

I have a few more books on hold at the branch by work that I have to pick up this week:

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (I’ve been meaning to read this mystery since it came out; the third one in the series is either just out or due out any moment)
• The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (another mystery that’s been on my list for a while…)
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is the next book for the Classics readalong (I really hope it’s not too scary!)

What are you currently reading? Do you borrow much from your local library or do you tend to buy the majority of your books?

This week’s Weekly Geeks, coming on the heels of major award announcements in children’s literature, encourages participants to choose one of four options relating to award-winning kiddie lit. Having just read the 1979 Newbery Medal winner last night, I thought the timing was perfect to avail myself of the third choice:

Review a new-to-you award-winning book this week

The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin

From the jacket: “This highly inventive mystery involves sixteen people (including a dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge, a bookie,a burglar, and a bomber) who are invited to the reading of the very strange will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. The could become millionaires, depending on how they play the game. All they have to do is find the answer — but the answer to what? The Westing game is tricky and dangerous, but the heirs play on — through blizzards, burglaries, and bombings.”

My take: Somehow I missed this children’s classic when I was growing up, but periodically since leaving college it has popped up on my radar screen and I always think, “I should track this down the next time I go to the library.” But by the time I next am choosing books to check out, it’s slipped back into the crevices of my mind.

This time, though, I was contemplating what to read for the Back to the Classics challenge and remembered to go looking for it at the library.

I’m so glad I did.

The general synopsis is this: Six families/individuals are approached about
moving into an empty, five-story, luxury apartment building on the banks of Lake Michigan. The rents are just what each of them can afford and they sign the leases immediately. Later in the fall, each of them (as well as the building’s three general employees) are called to the mansion of the building’s reclusive owner, Samuel W. Westing, paper magnate, to hear the reading of the will of the recently departed millionaire.

Instead of receiving a straight-up inheritance, they find they are paired off and tasked with solving who is responsible for Westing’s death. Each team is presented with a $10,000 check that both must sign to cash and four words to puzzle over.

Everyone returns to the apartment building to meet up with their partner and begin pursuing their task. As time goes on, they begin spending more time with one another, and, to their surprise, they find that their partner gives them just what they need, if not to help win the game, then to win at life.

I heartily recommend this to fans of mysteries, regardless of age, because it will keep you guessing until the end. Its madcap style also will appeal to fans of Clue (the boardgame, but I suppose also the movie), Monty Python, or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

I also want to note that the 2003 edition, which is what I borrowed from the library, contains the most heart-warming introduction I’ve ever read written by Ann Durell, Raskin’s editor and friend.

I’ll be checking out Raskin’s other books to see if they, too, are as sweet and as worth reading as The Westing Game ended up being.

Pages: 182

This novel also qualifies for a couple other challenges:

Just Read More Novels Month, for which this is my first contribution

Back to the Classics Challenge 2011, which I blogged about joining here. This qualifies as my children’s/young adult classic book.

I’m a GoodReads user and periodically enter to win free books. Last month, I learned I’d won an advance reader copy of Matthew Gallaway’s debut novel, The Metropolis Case, which was released Dec. 28. Crown Publishing sent me a review copy at the end of December. And then they sent me a second copy last week. Their confusion is your benefit because I’m hoping to share the redundant book with one of you.

Leave me a comment telling me either what your favorite book of 2010 was or what you’re most looking forward to reading in 2011 by Monday evening, Jan. 17, at 9 p.m. EST. I’ll randomly select one commenter and send The Metropolis Case off to you next week.

Crown’s summary of the book:

From the smoky music halls of 1860s Paris to the tumbling skyscrapers of twenty-first-century New York, a sweeping tale of passion, music, and the human heart’s yearning for connection

This unlikely quartet is bound together across centuries and continents by the strange and spectacular history of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece opera Tristan and Isolde. Grandly operatic in scale, their story is one of music and magic, love and death, betrayal and fate. Matthew Gallaway’s riveting debut will have readers spellbound from the opening page to its breathtaking conclusion.

I’ve spent the past six weeks reading pretty much only Christmas stories. At the end of 2010, I read Janet Evanovich’s holiday mystery, Visions of Sugar Plums (which Rudi and I had listened to a couple years ago); Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, a passable romance novel that focused on who comprises a family; Miracle on 34th Street, which I reviewed here; and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which Rudi and I listened to via CraftLit on our drive home from Connecticut.

But I still had a couple Christmas books in progress, all of which I finished in the last week:

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman)

From the jacket: “A lost but not forgotten childhood is evoked in this nostalgic recollection that endures as one of the most beloved Christmas stories of all time.”

My take: This charmingly illustrated edition of Dylan Thomas’ classic piece reminiscing about a young boy’s Christmas day was a delight to read. Although my reading of it was accomplished in a single day’s commute, it was a moving and transporting tale and one which I’d like to track down for my own collection.

Pages: 47

O Christmas Three: O. Henry, Tolstoy, Dickens

From the jacket: “Heartwarming stories that recall Christmas past.”

My take: Another small book that included four short stories. The first is O. Henry’s ubiquitous “Gift of the Magi,” a well-known, bittersweet story of a couple who sacrifice their most valuable personal possessions in the name of love. The second was Tolstoy’s “Where Love Is, There God Is Also,” a folk tale of a man who, while he awaits the arrival of God, offers up acts of kindness to those around him. Rounding out the book were two Dickens stories: “The Seven Poor Travellers” focuses on a narrator who provides Christmas Eve dinner to seven travellers staying at a hostel for the night and who regales them with a story afterwards. “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older” is more of a reflective essay that shares how as we age Christmas comes to be more of a tying of the living and the dead and of the past, present, and future than it is when we were young.

The O. Henry piece was its usual sweet self, and it’s good to revisit the source material since it is so often adapted by others. I was surprised by how much I liked the Tolstoy story and am inspired to read something by him in the coming year. And while the Dickens pieces were my least favorite, it was interesting to read writings of his so unlike his other material.

Pages: 100

An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor

From the jacket: “Barry Laverty, M.B., is looking forward to his first Christmas in the cozy village of Ballybucklebo, at least until he learns that his sweetheart, Patricia, might not be coming home for the holidays. That unhappy prospect dampens his spirits somewhat, but Barry has little time to dwell on his romantic disappointments. Christmas may be drawing nigh, but there is little peace to be found on earth, especially for a young doctor plying his trade in the emerald hills and glens of rural Ireland.”

My take: Recommended to me by Nan, this is the third in a series of books set in a fictional village in Northern Ireland in the mid-1960s. If you’re a fan of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small or any of his other veterinary works, you will find this a comfortable read. Like those works, this one features a young man fresh from school joining the practice of an older curmudgeonly master (in this case named Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly) and moving into the home/office, which is kept by a dear housekeeper (Mrs. Kincaid, or Kinky, here). Instead of pets and livestock, we are treated to patients of a human kind, but they are just as quirky as Herriot’s creations.

The Christmas setting is a nice one, and you soon find yourself immersed in the village’s preparations for the holidays, a time when the Catholics and the Presbyterians join together to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I found my mouth watering every time the story entered Kinky’s kitchen and I was relieved to find an afterword from her with some Christmas recipes. There’s also a glossary which gives insight into the many Irish phrases sprinkled throughout the book.

The one thing I did find distracting was the author’s obvious struggle to explain certain aspects of his story — medical problems/procedures and various cultural references from Ulster 50 years ago. You learned a lot as the book went on, but it felt like it bogged the story down from time to time. There was definitely “more telling than showing” going on in those instances and the jamming in of facts had the unfortunate side effect of making Fingal sometimes come across as a lecturing bore.

That aside, I did like the story and the characters and plan to read the first two books in the series at some point in the future.

Pages: 495

I told no one that I hoped to read 50 books this year. I don’t think I ever even said the words aloud, but they were there, all year long, inside my head. I hadn’t counted until today.

Books read in 2010 (in roughly the order I read them):

(more…)