The novel, divided into eleven chapters, each of which focuses on a single character, commences with Lloyd Burko, a foreign correspondent in Paris. Burko, a seventy-year-old American, is isolated from every conceivable facet of his life. His wife, eighteen years his junior, spends most of her time—including nights—in the apartment across the hall with a man named Didier. The paper no longer seems to have much need for him; Burko suggests a piece on rising prices of rosé in France, but is told the paper is only interested in current events—in news. This disinterest is only exacerbated by the fact that not only does Burko not have e-mail, he doesn’t even own a computer. Technology, like everything else, has left him behind.

In each chapter that follows, the theme of isolation is furthered. Hardy Benjamin, the paper’s business reporter, dives into a relationship with an obnoxious leech simply to stave off her immutable fear of spinsterhood. Ruby Zaga, copy editor, spends New Year’s Eve alone in a hotel room—as is her tradition—dropping rotten fruit on construction workers below. Abbey Pinnola, the paper’s CFO, agonizes over the prospect of having to speak to the man seated next to her on an eleven-hour flight from Rome to Atlanta.

The line between isolation and misanthropy can be fuzzy, though in a novel without a great deal of external conflict, a periodic venturing into the latter makes for welcome tension and frequent humor. Indeed, what happens to these characters is far less important than the simple fact that each is so profoundly isolated. Rather than populating his novel with this expansive cast of characters and then giving them free reign to interact with one another—as one might expect of colleagues who share a small office—Rachman confines each to his or her own twenty or thirty pages, then moves on to the next. If a character is lucky, he or she may appear again in a later chapter, though rarely are these appearances any more than cameos serving to tie the solitary chapters together.

Despite their isolation, these characters are captivating and extremely well drawn. Rachman’s true authorial knack lies in drafting diverse and realistic individuals, often in a single line. “Arthur’s cubicle used to be near the watercooler, but the bosses tired of having to chat with him each time they got thirsty,” the second chapter begins. Kathleen Solson “takes unearned pride in her looks,” Craig Menzies knows the exact number of socks he put through the wash last year (728, if you’re taking notes). Like any good journalist, Rachman gets to the heart of a character as quickly as possible, wasting few words. In the space of those twenty or thirty pages, he manages to delve deep into his characters, using both humor and pathos to illuminate their insecurities, their specific and disparate neuroses. Especially considering a character is often forced to share that space with one or more intermediary persons—a spouse, a child, a colleague—this efficiency of characterization is essential in allowing the novel to accomplish a sense of depth.

In a narrative sense, on the other hand, the novel’s habit of jumping from one scene to the next without transition can be distracting. Gaps in both time and place are separated by nothing more than a paragraph break. Further, these jumps are often preceded by a line of dialogue meant to act as a punch line of sorts, a technique used often by televised sitcoms. This puts a great deal of pressure on the poignancy or humor of that one-liner; occasionally Rachman nails it, though more often the line falls flat and the reader is left jostled. What’s even more disconcerting is Rachman’s inexplicable gapping over several crucial scenes, leaving the reader not only jostled, but confused. Benjamin’s indolent boyfriend, Rory, criticizes her during a stand-up act, though Benjamin spends the scene in a bathroom stall, precluding the reader from hearing what Rory actually says. In the novel’s final chapter, a climactic speech concerning the fate of the newspaper is read aloud, though it does not appear on the page.

The most egregious example of this is Rachman’s glossing over the death of Arthur Gopal’s daughter. Though it brings about one of the most remarkable character shifts in the novel, the reader is forced to infer what has happened. Arthur’s interactions with Pickle are among the novel’s most tender and moving; Pickle’s death is sure to be deeply affecting. Thus, Rachman’s reticence surrounding the event is puzzling, as if he felt ill-equipped to tackle—or else include—a subject of such weight.

The most successful chapters are indeed those that avoid overwrought and hackneyed male-female interactions. Benjamin’s relationship with Rory approaches cliché, the depiction of Menzie’s deteriorating marriage is, at its worst, contrived and melodramatic. In a novel about isolation, all relationships are doomed to fail, though the failures themselves are too often overblown here, as if their inevitability must be compensated for. When Pickle’s death leads to the eventual collapse of her parents’ marriage, the collapse is merely summarized, as it should be. “The old Visantha is long gone anyway,” Gopal reflects, “just as the previous Arthur has perished.” Rachman relies not on melodrama here, but instead on his faculty for efficiency. What’s important is not the collapse itself, but how each character reacts to it. Not the cause, but the effect.

Because of its exploration of office politics, and given Rachman’s idiosyncratic and assorted characters, comparisons to Josh Ferris’ debut novel, Then We Came to the End, are inevitable. Gopal, the obituary writer whose initial “overarching goal at the paper is indolence,” recalls Benny Shassburger’s attempt to pass an entire day without touching his keyboard. Zaga’s stolen chair recalls Tom Mota’s. Solson, the paper’s feared and despised editor-in-chief, recalls Lynn Mason, the authority figure in Ferris’ office. The difference, of course, is that the characters inhabiting The Imperfectionists’ office rarely, if ever, interact with one another on the page. “Nobody talks at the office,” a recently-fired employee of the paper laments. “It’s like a veil of silence in there.” Unlike Ferris, Rachman never depicts a fully occupied office. And while this certainly suits the novel’s theme, one can’t help but wonder about the cost of this lack of group interaction, which in Ferris’ novel is a constant source both of pathos and sublime humor. The Imperfectionists is certainly a funny novel, though for all its claustrophobia the laughter is never allowed to ring out completely.

Perhaps because so much time is devoted to character, the novel is almost completely devoid of setting. As often occurs when Americans write about Europe, the reader is bombarded with both street names—Via del Corso, Via di Ripetta, Via Giulia—and landmarks—Stazione Termini, Fiumicino Airport, Piazza San Salvatore, Valle dei Cani, the Cavalieri Hilton, as if an accumulation of either will suffice. In fact, despite the novel’s being set in Rome, the most vivid portrait Rachman offers, which comes in the opening chapter, depicts Paris: “White walls dirtied where rain drizzled and drainpipes leaked, the paint peeling, shutters closed tight, courtyards below where residents’ bicycles huddle, handlebars and pedals and spokes jammed into each other, zinc roofs overhead, capped chimney pipes streaking white smoke across white sky.” Two or three similarly brief and list-heavy sentences describing Rome appear later, though characters dominate even in these instances. “Traffic whooshes along Lungotevere,” Rachman writes, tossing in another street for good measure. “Pedestrians pass, quietly, respectfully. She admires the broad-shouldered church there—it looks as if it had kicked aside all those grimy cars crowding its steps.” In this rare exterior scene, we get cars and we get people—the ubiquitous and nonspecific stuff of any modern city, and even when the description turns to the architecture, it is not only generalized, but heavily personified; in Rachman’s Rome, even the churches wish to be left alone. Neither does much interior description—or any description at all, really—occur in the novel. This might otherwise be seen as a major shortcoming, were Rachman’s characters not complex or specific enough to make up for it. Which is not to say that a few exquisite depictions of the city would not be welcome. These characters may be isolated from their place, though that doesn’t mean the author (who, it should be noted, resides in Rome) couldn’t let himself go from time to time.

One irrefutable consequence of the Internet’s proliferation is the current deterioration of the newspaper industry. Rachman, a former editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris, as well as a former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, describes this world with the compassion and astuteness that comes from familiarity. With the same efficiency he uses to draft characters, he depicts a paper that refuses to keep up with its changing environment. “The Internet is to news,” Herman Cohen, corrections editor, states, “what car horns are to music.” This seems to settle the matter, and the paper resolves to stumble through the remainder of its days solely in the anachronistic and lonely realm of print. Nonetheless, an obsession with Internet technology pervades the pages of The Imperfectionists in much the same way as it does contemporary society. Various characters refer constantly and derisively to the paper’s lack of a website throughout the novel, whose conclusion, as a result, can’t come as any particular surprise.

Accompanying Rachman’s narrative proper is a serialized and italicized history of the paper itself, which appears in two- or three-page segments at the end of every chapter and serves mostly to further the novel’s two primary themes: isolation and the effects of technology on the newspaper industry. The history begins with the paper’s inception in 1953 and culminates in its demise fifty-three years later, though not until the penultimate chapter do any of the novel’s proper characters appear therein. Thus, the employees of the paper have little—if any—effect on its fate. This imparts a sense of inevitability on the novel, and what is gained thematically is offset by a loss of vitality in its otherwise rich and engaging characters, whose actions are robbed of consequence. The characters scuttle about the office like bugs in a jar, perhaps knowing, perhaps not knowing that eventually the oxygen will run out or the jar will be overturned and they’ll be set free. Even the most compelling of characters must have the power to effect her environment, if a reader is to take her completely seriously.

What comes from all of this, then, is a novel populated by fascinating, humorous, and tragic characters who, in the end, are somewhat subverted by the author’s insistence on pushing theme. The theme is successfully rendered, though, and the novel paints a vivid and truthful portrait of newspapers in the early twenty-first century. That the paper is unnamed elevates it to the status of a sort of everypaper, which does not bode well for the industry if Rachman’s conclusions prove prescient. As today’s readers become increasingly accustomed to (and demanding of) free access to information, circulation diminishes, as do advertising and subscription revenues. Papers across the globe slash budgets or simply go under; major metropoleis for the first time are facing the prospect of becoming paperless. And this is the world in which The Imperfectionists operates. “Newspapers are like anything else,” a man in one of the historical asides states. “They’re pure and incorruptible and noble—as far as they can afford to be. Starve them and they’ll kneel in the muck with the rest of the bums. Rich papers can afford to be upstanding and, if you like, self-important. We don’t have that luxury right now.” The man is speaking in 1975, though the statement has never been more true. The only difference is that in today’s world, no one can afford that luxury.