![]() ![]() The Imperfectionists, one might point out Rachman's occasional tendency toward cuteness, of bow-tying every loose end in gilded ribbon, of fighting too hard against imperfection. ![]() In these brief vignettes, Rachman displays a knack for telling details and economical storytelling worthy of Ernest Hemingway, a former newsman who used interchapters in his own story collection Personally, this reader preferred the bittersweet chapters to the more baldly comic ones, like the admittedly not-unfunny section in which aspiring Middle East correspondent Winston Cheung is professionally manhandled by Rich Snyder, an obnoxious, older journalist who speaks and writes in a ludicrous faux-surfer dialect: "That bombing was sweet, now let's kick ass on the Northern Alliance."Ä«etween these chapters are italicized passages to fill us in on the paper's five-decade history. ![]() ![]() One is bound to pick favourite newspeople or attempt to uncrack the underlying formula the author uses. The omnibus structure used by Rachman, who was born in London and raised in Vancouver, naturally invites quibbling. His novel is sprinkled with hard-won observations such as that " 'news' is often a polite way of saying 'editor's whim' " and "urnalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males." And yet even someone whose familiarity with newsrooms doesn't extend beyond the work of Clark Kent and Peter Parker will recognize these characters. Rachman leaves little doubt that he's writing what he knows well. ![]()
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