The imperfectionists

In 1953, a rich American who finds himself in Rome has an idea: The war is over, there's a new world being born... Why not start a newspaper? Not just any newspaper, but a Serious Newspaper, an English-language newspaper that reports news from all over the world, seriously and intelligently. Done and done: he hires two intelligent editors and they get down to business.

Fast-forward 50-odd years: it's the late 00s, the paper is still based in Rome, still reporting news, still with a loyal if dwindling readership... but both the paper and the people working there are going through a huge mid-life crisis. CNN and the Internet have changed the news irrevocably, the old newsmen have died of lung cancer or strokes ages ago, the owners have become professional investors, and the elephant in the room is trumpeting something that sounds like a last sad chorus.

"The internet is to news," he said, "what car horns are to music."

And at that point, this probably sounds like a serious and slightly crotchety tale of how oh my times have changed, dearie me, nobody has any yada yada yada anymore. Except here's what Rachman does: he visits a different character in each chapter - the editors, the journalists, the owners, the foreign correspondents, the trainees, the readers - picking up the story from their point of view, both of journalism and the world, and their whole lives; what's left of it when they've sacrificed almost everything to run a tiny Serious newspaper that everyone knows is dying. And every chapter, while carrying the plot forward somewhere in the background, subverts the previous one. There are almost no Network- (or The Newsroom-)style proud defenses of the role of journalism, and if there are, the next chapter is bound to turn them on their head by giving the talking stick to a character who thinks the previous one is a pretentious prat. And is happy to tell us about it in detail; someone has to be blamed for the fact that something is about to end, after all.

There are laughs, there are tears, there's love and heartbreak and ugly death, absolutely brilliant little character sketches that would work as separate short stories... but put it all together and you get this puzzle of a novel, sliding down so easily that you barely notice how Rachman piles on all the sneaky backstory and all the ways people can dedicate their lives to exposing The Truth, while living lives filled with lies and wishful thinking and things they cannot bear to see... y'know, life. There's the title, I guess.