Funny at times, poignant at others, tale of the rise and fall of an English-language paper in Rome. (The author worked at the International Herald Tribune.) Each chapter relates a different character's story linked together by the author's tone and their work at the paper. Wonderfully quotable descriptions throughout, plus chapter titles. ( )

I thought this was good. It's not much like what I normally read, in that it's very aggressively "literary" and has lots of "deep" and "meaningful" undertones, but I still found the book to be engaging and well written. The different perspectives on the newspaper combine nicely, and the book has a good pacing that makes it enjoyable to read even when certain sections are really quite depressing.

The book really does lay bare some of the sadder aspects of the human condition, so if you are not a fan of books that lead you to some self reflection, stay away. ( )

Follows the life of small newspaper in Rome and the imperfect lives of those who work there. OK read.

Hmmm. This was a really hard book to wrap my head around. It started very slowly and I didn't really understand the structure with the inset sections about the founding of the paper.

Once I got a handle on things I decided I didn't like it much -- depressing stories. But then, something shifted and I really started to enjoy what was happening. The connections started to make sense and the stories were still sad but not quite as awful and bleak as the earlier stories but then we got to the final chapter and that really was a total downer. It made me feel awful and like it was all just a terrible use of my time. ( )

I liked the feel of this, like short stories all tied loosely to each other through the common experience of the newspaper.

Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but short stories are one of my favourite things in the world. ( )