However, running into an old boyfriend changes her view of herself and causes her to be more content with her husband. Her husband has recently engaged in an affair, causing Kathleen to consider one of her own.

Kathleen Solson is the editor of the newspaper.

However, when his friend comes for a visit in Rome, Herman finally realizes he does not aspire to greatness, effectively ending the friendship. Herman has a good friend from childhood who he always thought would be a prize-winning writer, someone he could look up to. Herman Cohen is a grammar-aphile who is constantly driving the staff of the newspaper crazy with his bible of words not to be used in the newspaper. Therefore when Hardy meets an Irish man who shows just the slightest interest in her, she ignores everything unpleasant about him including the fact that he and his friends burglarized her apartment. Hardy Benjamin is a young and intelligent business writer who struggles in her love life. Arthur suddenly finds a passion for writing and is promoted to culture editor. In the end, Lloyd ends up confessing everything to his son and moving in with him.Īrthur Gopal is the son of a famous writer who is content to write obituaries until the day that his daughter dies in an accident. Lloyd does anyway only to discover the story was fictional and that his son does not actually work for the French foreign ministry anymore. The son offers some information, but makes his father promise not to write about it. Lloyd meets with his son, who works for the French foreign ministry, and asks for a story he might write about. However, Lloyd is beginning to find it difficult to make a living as most of his stories are not of a quality to be published daily.

Lloyd Burko is an older man who has been a newspaper reporter for more than forty years. The Imperfectionists is a sometimes funny and often shocking look at human nature with the backdrop of the newspaper business. Through these stories, the reader learns about the idiosyncrasies of newspaper reporting as well as the common difficulties that each featured employee suffers in their everyday life. The novel is a collection of stories about the imperfect people who work at an unnamed international newspaper that is on the verge of shutting down. The Imperfectionists is the first novel by writer Tom Rachman.

The imperfectionists novel