Catch-up: The Imperfectionists

The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman

As I recall, got great press when it came out. Definitely enjoyed this tale of an English-language newspaper in Italy...although by the time I got around to reading it, I thought it was about editors...possibly at a publishing house? In any case, I did really enjoy it. It was a while ago, though, so I don't totally remember why. Good writing, basically. Wasn't totally in love with all of the stories (wasn't expecting a series of somewhat interlocking stories) or all the characters (I don't mean that I didn't like them all - wasn't supposed to - just that I wasn't captivated by all of them), but still really liked some aspects. I flagged some passages, although I will be guessing, at this long remove, as to just why...

"Initially, the paper suffered under the suspicion that it was an international mouthpiece for Ott's business empire, but this was unfounded. The greatest influence over content was necessity - they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office" (50).

Funny! On two counts! And quite reminiscent of a lot of academic writing, too.

In a lengthy - and delightful! - description of an editor's "Bible," a super idiosyncratic style guide, we read:

GWOT: No one knows what this means, above all those who use the term. Nominally, it stands for Global War on Terror. But since conflict against an abstraction is, to be polite, tough to execute, the term should be understood as marketing gibberish. Our reporters adore this sort of humbug; it is the copy editor's job to exclude it. See also: OBL, Acronyms; and Nitwits.  (78)

Ha. There's more about the Bible. This may have been my favorite cycle in the book. The same editor also produces an internal newsletter he calls Why?, collecting his "favorite" mistakes and errors and bad ideas from the newspaper (79).

There is one character, so interesting, and so well drawn - Ornella, who we see, in some old family pictures, "when she was dashing, too thin and too young. (She was only sixteen at the time of her marriage to Cosimo.) She has a different face today, matted with peach foundation, orange lipstick, liner around her eyes, green mascara so thick that when she blinks one sees frog's fingers clasping. Her hair is yellow, dyed at great expense and pulled back in a bun so tight that the canvas of her face appears to be held fast by the knot at the back of her head' (209).

I would have said "frogs' fingers" but minor quibble - that line, right there, just that fragment of a line, is the kind of thing I will remember about a book for years. Creative, unique, but still totally understandable and evocative; lovely.

I also love that when unexpectedly faced with caring for a small child, her immediate - slightly nervous - reaction is not just to feed the boy, but to make him "pastina in brodo." Of course! That's my fall-back for sick or hungover peers, but I would give it to babies and children too :)

ANOTHER month's worth of books

D**m, I am getting bad with this blogging thing...before more time goes by, I should at least list the books I read, I suppose, even if I don't get around to discussing them. The order is going to be all messed up, because while I think the piles around the apartment are in (reverse) chronological order (most recently read on top, oldest on the bottom), I'm not sure about the order of the piles...
N.B. - I just discovered after writing everything else in this post that some of the books were mentioned in the November 9 post, but never discussed. Specifically, The Red Garden, The Sisters Brothers, and Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. I must have held on to them to discuss them in greater detail, and then forgotten. So, basically, I have completely lost track of what I read, when. But at least I'm making a start now...and can bring a boatload of books back to the library this week!

The Magician's Book: A Sceptic's Adventures in Narnia, Laura Miller  -  interesting at points, but not as good as I was hoping it would be.

The Red Garden  Alice Hoffman  -  amusing enough, I guess, but there was some shady "history" at the outset that kind of turned me off, and it was hard to ever really get invested in the stories (weaving in and out of successive generations in the same town in Western Massachusetts) after that.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead  Sara Gran  -  NOT what I thought the book was going to be; I thought for some reason (it had been on the list a long time), that it was about a woman who returned to New Orleans where her deceased aunt (grandmother? something like that) had performed rituals to soothe the restless undead. Instead is was about a woman private investigator who returns to New Orleans (that part was right), where she had formerly had an older, female mentor (that part was kind of right), to solve a case involving a missing, possibly dead, man (which is...I guess a little like soothing the restless dead?) I don't know now if the book I was picturing actually IS a book, and I just got them confused, or if I totally imagined a different, and non-existent, book. In any case, this one was...fine? I actually think maybe I didn't like it that much, but I'm not sure if that's just because I was disappointed it wasn't what I thought it was...

The Sisters Brothers  Patrick DeWitt  -  fun. A "Western," I guess, but also well-written with an interesting main character.


The Vaults  Toby Ball  -  I really rather liked this one. Which was a very pleasant surprise because I had had it on the list for a while, and for some reason I thought it was some sort of trashy mystery-thriller thing, and then I got it and it was a mystery set in an alternate, sort of dystopian, U.S. past, very well conceived and written.

A Secret Alchemy  Emma Darwin  -  dumb. I wanted to like it, but dumb. I didn't even really remember what it was, I had checked it out from the library forever ago, and it had just been sitting on my bookcase, and finally one night I had nothing new to read, and the title sounded fairly light-weight, and I was tired and just wanted to read a bit in bed, so I started it. It's one of those stories where it switches back and forth between ye olde England and modern England and it was the stupid Woodvilles and the Yorks and all that bother. Novelists clearly love the whole drama, and I can see why, there's obviously a lot to play with, it's just never really captured my attention.

All About Lulu  Jonathan Evison  -  great, great, great.

The Black Tower  P.D. James  -  this is one of the books I got off the bargain carts outside Harvard Bookstore over a year ago (yes? will need to check - a long time ago, anyhow), when I was super hung over and looking for some light reading, and I finally got around to reading it; that is, to finishing it. I actually started it a while ago, got a couple of chapters (if that) in, and then gave up because it was boring and I got more interesting books. But I was going to be taking the train to the 'burbs for some reason (Thanksgiving?) and it's a small paperback, unlike most of the big, heavy (library bound) books I had on hand at the time, so I plowed through it. It got better, I supposed, but I found the whole thing rather boring. I've enjoyed James' books featuring the detective Cordelia Gray (I think that's her name - An Unsuitable Job for a Woman? Mom had it years and years ago, and I read it a few times, and then I think I read another one - Cover Her Face? I might just be making up titles now...), but her Adam Dalgliesh character, who I think it the protagonist of her biggest series, has really never done it for me.

The Imperfectionists  Tom Rachman  -  quite good, not that that should be a surprise - I feel like this was widely, and well, reviewed...