#12 The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists is a novel about the quirky, maddening, endearing people who write and read an international newspaper based in Rome: from the obituary reporter who will do anything to avoid work, to the young freelancer who is manipulated by an egocentric war correspondent, to the dog-obsessed publisher who seems less interested in his struggling newspaper than in his magnificent basset hound, Schopenhauer.

Or so says the ad copy from the novels website, but it is so much more than that. The Imperfectionists details the last days of the aforementioned international, English language newspaper. Like most newspapers theses day it is struggling with declining readership and revenue in the digital age. What is so engaging about Rachman’s novel is that, not only does it encapsulate a soon to be bygone way of viewing the world and the people swept in the current of changing times and technology, but it does so in such an original and masterly way for a debut novelist.

Each chapter is basically a short story centering on one of the people who work for or are affiliated in some way with the newspaper. Even though the chapters are complete and self contained in and of themselves, taken together they form a tableau the tells the story of newspaper, it’s personality and internal politics. In between each chapter is a brief one or two page interlude detailing the history of the newspaper through the years.

What is brilliant about The Imperfectionists is the literary slight of hand Rachman uses to accomplish this feat, it all done through nuance, suggestion, and each character’s natural actions within the confines of their personal narrative. Except for the historical interludes, there is no overt exposition. Characters mentioned in passing, or shown as secondary characters in early chapters, become the main characters in later chapters and vice-versa giving the book a non-intrusive continuity that acts as a narrative thread between stories.

Taken on their own the chapters/stories themselves are marvels of characterization and short story writing. They are both funny and tragic, but also human in the most authentic way. There a couple of minor instances where things get a bit over the top, but that is a small quibble and is more than balanced out by the believability of the main characters and the interesting and ingenious ways the stories are told. The characters have surprising depth and stories go in unpredictable, but always believable, directions. In each chapter, the main character is irrevocably changed by the end along with the reader’s perception of them, which is what all great fiction should do.

If literature is meant to give insight and personal context to the time it is written in, The Imperfectionists is an instant classic. It is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

#11 Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude is not an easy book to explain or summarize in a paragraph or two, so I’m going to place that burden on the Random House publicity department by cutting and pasting their summary from the Fortress of Solitude webpage. It still doesn’t do the story justice, but it’s as good as I could up with and certainly more pithy. My analysis follows.

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."



This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions-what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money-are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.



This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives.

This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption.

It is a testament Lethem that he successfully weaves so many themes and subjects into Fortress of Solitude without them seeming disparate or making the narrative chaotic. The fact that so many fully formed characters and viewpoints are not only represented but are essential to, not only each other, but also the overall story is quite an accomplishment.

Any one of half a dozen characters or themes in Fortress of Solitude could have sustained their own novel. The fact that the Lethem can shift through so many themes, subjects, and POV’s without alienating the reader is amazing. That’s not to say that some of the shifts aren’t abrupt or jarring, but with a bit of patience on the reader’s part it all fits together and makes sense within the story.

The most jarring example, for me, is the introduction of the magic ring halfway through the novel. Up until that point the story had been a straight period piece/coming-of-age story chronicling Dylan’s difficulties growing up a white Jewish kid in a black Brooklyn neighborhood during the early seventies. Early on Dylan mentions the “flying man” he sees out of the corner of his eye, but that can easily be dismissed as the symbolic figments of a comic obsessed kid. But when that flying man falls out of the sky and gives Dylan the ring, things change. The moment Dylan started flying was so shocking and out of left field for me that I questioned whether it really happened. However, this bit of magical realism opens the story up to explore the core characters and themes in insightful and original ways. The super-powers the ring confers are unpredictable and the personality of the wearer influences both how the ring works and how they act with it on so that it becomes another reflection of each individual character rather than a plot device.

Yet, underneath the period coming-of-age story and magical realism undertones, Fortress of Solitude is a story about race, identity, and culture and where those three things meet, diverge, and run parallel. It’s about the fragile politics of race between two best friends, one white and one black. It’s about the things we cling to, like art and music, which we use to shape our identities. It’s about escaping your upbringing and past and then learning to come to terms with it when you can’t let it go.

Lethem imbues the deeper cultural meaning with an understanding of pop-culture throughout the story that touches on the bigger pop-cultural events of the time like the burgeoning hip-hop and punk movements. This gives the reader reference points, be it an obscure comic book or fondly remembered one-hit-wonder single, which gives the story a knowing and authentic nostalgia.

Fortress of Solitude is a hard book to boil down and dissect. But, as with the best books, it lingers in your subconscious. You can’t help but think about it, and each time you do the story becomes deeper and richer. It’s smart, profound, identifiable and yes, exasperating at times, but overall a worthwhile reading experience.

#10 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

I’ve been on a bit of a James Bond kick lately. Until recently I’d never seen the Sean Connery Bond movies much to the chagrin of some of my friends. I had just never gotten around to it. When I was growing up Roger Moore was James Bond and while I enjoyed his portrayal as a kid, it didn’t set world on fire for me. However, I recently watched the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. This has in turn has reignited my interest in all things Bond, James Bond. And being the bibliophile that I am, has lead me to Ian Fleming’s original novels.

In Casino Royale, the first in the series, Monsieur Le Chiffre ("the cipher"), the treasurer of a Soviet-backed trade union in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, is running a baccarat game in the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, France, in order to recover union money he lost in a failed chain of brothels.

Expert baccarat player James Bond (British secret agent 007) is assigned the defeat of Le Chiffre, in the hope that his gambling debts will provoke Soviet espionage agency SMERSH to kill him. Add in Bond Girl/Femme Fatale Vesper Lynd and a few twists and turns and that’s basically what you get.

For those weaned on the film series (especially the aforementioned film version with Daniel Craig) this novel is going to be surprisingly sedate and down to earth. This is definitely Bond in his most formative state and Fleming seems to be feeling his way through the story as much as his main character. All the familiar Bond tropes – the slam bang opening action sequence, the gadgets, the suave personality, quips, and serial womanizing are not in evidence. This Bond is tentative, business-like, brutish and somewhat naïve. I’ve heard that Fleming became influenced by the film series as it developed and its more fantastical elements crept into later novels, but here we have a simple, low-key introduction to the character of James Bond and as such it’s probably one of the most realistic stories in the Bond canon.

For those used to the non-stop action and globetrotting of the films, that realism is going to be hard to take in places. The centerpiece of the novel is the baccarat game and long tedious passages are given over to explaining the intricacies of that card game. The few moments of action can be counted on one hand. However, when they do come, they are sudden, striking and give real weight and character complications to the story. Which is as it should be. Good spy stories are about intrigue, subterfuge, blinds and double blinds. Action is usually a result of something going wrong and should be surprising and have consequence.

While I enjoy the modern Bond, I wonder if he’s not a character of a certain time and place? Part of the appeal of Casino Royale for me is the cold war themes and the portrait of post-war Europe; there is real gravitas to an agent and agency of a humbled old world empire caught between the emerging U.S. and Soviet super-powers and finding its way in the new world order. That is something that is lost in the modern version. What is Bond’s place in the post-cold war era? Today he’s just a generic super secret agent.

I know this version is short lived as the series became more and more cartoonish as it progressed, but at least in Casino Royale, Fleming evokes the fear and tensions of that moment in history and a character figuring out his place in it.