PositiveThe A.V ClubTom Rachman’s debut novel, The Imperfectionists, is neither fetishistic nor entirely nostalgic: It’s a strikingly efficient, slim saga of the rise and demise of an English-language newspaper ... Rachman writes cinematically, but not in the usual sense. His prose is propelled by quick edits. He cuts to scenes like a screenwriter, with paragraphs leaping forward in time without a page-break to prepare readers for the jolt. The reportage style gives the novel a clickety-clack newsroom buzz befitting its subject ... The Imperfectionists is a lovingly rendered tribute to a increasingly bygone era, and a page-turner for those still in thrall to turning them.
Javier Marias
RaveAV ClubMarías reveals all of this efficiently, then sets it aside in the early pages of his four-part Infatuations. Death is not the spoiler here. Anyone equipped solely with the curiosity of a whodunit aficionado will be sorely disappointed, probably bored, and likely frustrated by the novel’s remaining three acts ... What follows are signature Marías digressions, with ruminations on death, time, truth, memory, envy, and infatuation—the great themes get turned over again and again, like soil in a graveyard ... It is a novel that can tug conventionally with the promise of revelation and deliver on the most obvious questions: What happened? Who did it? Why? ... Marías’ novel operates on so many levels simultaneously, it becomes a piece of evidence itself, an artifact that proves its own argument. It is a dizzying feat that relegates \'metafiction\' to that dreary province literary terms go should they fail to articulate, as The Infatuations does so artfully, that life and fiction are inventions often made from the same materials.
