Christian House

A choice of first novels | 7 August 2010

Write what you know. Isn’t that what aspiring novelists are told?

issue 07 August 2010

Write what you know. Isn’t that what aspiring novelists are told?

Write what you know. Isn’t that what aspiring novelists are told? While two first-timers have taken the advice this summer, there is also an exception to prove the rule.

In The Imperfectionists (Quercus, £16.99), Tom Rachman draws on his time at the International Herald Tribune to write a quirky patchwork tale of an English-language newspaper based in Rome. Cyrus Ott, helmsman of an American industrial dynasty, chronicles the paper’s fortunes, from its inception in the 1950s to the Noughties. Interspersed are the stories of the various reporters, editors and readers whose lives are anchored to Cyrus’s grand enterprise on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.

They make for a hapless bunch. There’s the ageing Paris correspondent, slowly fading into obscurity in the city of light, the obituaries writer, with one foot in the professional grave, and the young Cairo stringer, railroaded by a visiting war reporter.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in