The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Slate's Audio Book Club on The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

I'm Julia Turner, and I'm joined today by Slate's television critic, Troy Patterson.

Hi, Troy.

Hi, Julia.

And by our foreign editor, June Thomas. Hello, June.

Hey, Julia. I'm glad to have you guys here. So the imperfectionist is a novel set mostly in Rome

at the offices of a newspaper that resembles fairly closely the International Herald Tribune.

It's an English language international daily. The author, Tom Rachman, worked briefly at the International Herald Tribune. It's an English language international daily. The author, Tom Rachman,

worked briefly at the International Herald Tribune, and this is his fiction debut. The structure

of the novel is a bit like a collection of short stories. There are 11 vignettes that focus on people

who work at the paper or, in one case, read it religiously. And then the vignettes are set off by brief passages about the family that founded the paper

and its fortunes during the 50 or so years that it's been in existence.

The book, despite being a fiction debut, was met with rave reviews, particularly from the New York Times, who put it on the

front cover of the Sunday Times book review with a rave by Christopher Buckley, who wrote that the book

is so good. I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off. I still haven't

answered that question, nor do I know how someone's so young, Rachman turns out to be 35,

though he looks even younger in his author photo, could have acquired such a precocious grasp of

human foibles. I almost feel sorry for Rachman because a debut of this order sets the bar so high.

So that's quite something to read before you launch into reading a book of fiction on your summer

vacation. I'm to start, just curious to know what you guys into reading a book of fiction on your summer vacation.

I'm to start, just curious to know what you guys think of the book.

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