Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

No matter what book reviewers have to say, I usually check what other readers think about a book on amazon.com before I buy it or borrow it from the library, being sure to read the sobering one-star and two-star comments. That's because I've learned from hard experience that you simply cannot trust book reviewers and blurbers. But I'm a slow learner in some things, and again recently fell for hyperbolic critical praise, this time dished out for Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists. As a result I bought a new hardback copy, no less (but only because it was marked down from $25 to $13.50 and I got free shipping.) Money--and time--wasted. I know: caveat emptor. But the ongoing critical malpractice smacks of fraud and deceitful advertising. Praised in the New York Times ("So good I had to read it twice..." "Marvelous"), Financial Times ("Each chapter is so finely wrought..." "Funny, poignant, occasionally breathtaking") and elsewhere, the so-called novel offers up a series of pedestrian vignettes about Rome-based Anglophone journalists who are largely ineffectual, neurotic, and mean-spirited. Often indistinguishable, they meld together into an unpalatable prose stew. Here are just a few examples of Rachman's characters, all of whom carry nearly the same importance in the episodic book: -a paranoid middle-aged copy editor who stalks a married man with no interest in her. -a fired reporter who manipulates the company accountant into a hotel room to humiliate her sexually and question her about his dismissal. -a news editor who theatrically evicts his straying but remorseful live-in girlfriend to teach her a lesson, but instead drives her back into the arms of her scorned lover. -a publisher who refuses to return calls from the managing editor, interacting successfully only with his dog and ultimately overseeing the demise of the newspaper. And there are other equally unsavory sorts that I did not enjoy spending time with and listening to their chit-chat. The vignettes fall far short of being resonant fiction with heart and meaning--what we look for in short stories and novels. The journalistic prose lacks vitality; the flabby dialogue needs trimming; the characters want life-support--what one should expect, I guess, in mainstream fiction these days. Which is why I generally avoid it, looking instead for high quality contemporary literature. But this ain't it. Tom Rachman, who seems like an affable fellow from his lengthy author's note on amazon.com, likely believes and revels in the high praise he has received from high places, thinking he has turned out a great comic novel. He's found the formula, seemingly, first time out of the gate, and will perhaps repeat it and, thus, stop growing as a writer.