It is 2007 and in Rome, Italy, a small English newspaper company is in trouble and struggling to remain afloat. As such, although written with wit and humor, there is an overlying sense of melancholy as one reads through each chapter dedicated to the story of each employee (American expats), it's current publisher and one extraordinary reader. The writing is remarkable and the format so perfect for the plot. What is brilliant about the format, is the way the author smartly inserts the different characters within the different stand-alone short stories, the technique so subtle and yet so startling. And as a flashback, at the end of each chapter, the history of the company, from its inception in 1953, slowly unfolds. Three absorbing stories are my favorites: Arthur Gopal, the Obituary writer, Ornella de Monterecchi, the Reader and Abbey Pinnola, the Chief Financial Officer.
'Lloyd shoves off the bedcovers and hurries to the front door in white underwear and black socks. He steadies himself on the knob and shuts his eyes. Chill air rushes under the door; he curls his toes. But the hallway is silent.'(opening lines)
'Travel means effort and a night away from home. Bleak. And nothing is worse than obit interviews. He must never disclose to his subjects that he's researching because they tend to become distressed. So, he claims to be working on a "profile." He draws out the moribund interview, confirms the facts he needs, then sits there, pretending to jot notes, stewing in guilt, remarking, "Extraordinary!" and "Did you really?" All the while, he knows how little will make it into print -- decades of a person's life condensed into a few paragraphs, with a final resting place at the bottom of page nine, between Puzzle-Wuzzle and World Weather.'(31)
"What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past. My past -- it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The person who inhabited it is not me. It's as if the present me is constantly dissolving. There's the line of Heraclitus: 'No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.' That's quite right. We enjoy this illusion of continuity, and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories."(37)
'Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshipped by man.'(38)
"My feeling is that, at heart, every story is a business story."(63)
'Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males.'(153)
'But we've got to acknowledge that we're entertainers of a sort. That doesn't mean phony. Doesn't mean vulgar. It means readable in the best way -- so people wake up wanting us before their coffee. If we're so reverent about public service that nobody reads us, we're not doing the public any service at all.'(179)
'How will she explain her contentment of living like a housewife?'(186)
'At newspapers, what was of the utmost importance yesterday is immaterial today.'(193)
'I suspect revenge is one of those things that's better in principle than in practice. I mean, there's no real satisfaction in making someone suffer because you have.... I mean, is the point to get justice -- to balance out something unfair? Nothing does that. ... The way to get over stuff, I think, is by forgetting.'(195)
'Typewriters disappeared next, replaced by video display terminals. Overnight, the newsroom's distinctive clack-clack-bing went silent. The rumbling basement presses hushed, too, with the work outsourced to modernized printing sites around the globe. No longer did vast rolls of newsprint slam into the backside of the building in the late afternoon, jolting any dozing reporter awake. No longer did delivery trucks clog Corso Vittorio at dawn as workmen loaded the papers, copies still warm.'(201)
'She has read every copy of the paper since 1976, when her husband, Cosimo de Monterecchi, was posted to Jeddah... She had never learned the technique of newspaper reading, so took it in order like a book, down the columns, left to right, page after page. She read every article and refused to move on until she was done, which meant that each edition took several days to complete.... One year into her newspaper reading, she was six months behind. When they returned to Rome in the 1990's, she remained stranded in the late 1970s. When it was the 1990s outside, she was just getting to know President Reagan. When planes struck the Twin Towers, she was watching the Soviet Union collapse. Today, it is February 18, 2007, outside this apartment. Within, the date remains April 23, 1994.'(207)
'Once at the boarding gate, Abbey falls into her customary travel coma, a torpor that infuses her brain like pickling fluid during long trips. In this state, she nibbles any snack in reach, grows mesmerised by strangers' footwear, turns philosophical, ends up weepy. She gazes at the backs of seats around the departure lounge: young couples nestling, old husbands reading books about old wars, lovers sharing headphones, whispered words about duty-free and delays.'(225)
2011 Dial Press Trade Paperback Edition
272 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
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